“Then show me your pipe.”
“I don’t have a pipe, man, I’m gonna twist that shit up in a joint.”
A moment passed. I would say that he thought it over, but there was nothing in those dead eyes that suggested thought. Without telegraphing any intent, without a blink or a warning, he turned his head and spat. A white blur flew out of his mouth and landed on the gray, polished sidewalk. I shrugged and reached my hand out to pass him the money.
He jumped in his seat. “Don’t fucking HAND it to me. Drop that shit on the ground.”
I dropped the bill on the sidewalk, turned, stooped quickly to pick up the plastic-wrapped rock he’d spit out, and walked away.
I cut around the corner to a bodega that, I figured, would have the necessary paraphernalia. Tiny roses, packaged in small glass tubes, corked on each end, were prominently displayed on the counter next to the register, along with fun-sized candy bars. Crackhead heaven. I bought a rose and asked the half-asleep attendant for some Brillo. He handed me what I needed and charged me a couple of bucks without a sideways glance.
I drove around, then stopped by the Rose Hotel on 6th and Howard, but the desk attendant didn’t know Reuben and no one holding down the pavement outside seemed to want to help. I took a slow drive around the corner, down an especially urine-stained block of Minna, but there was no action. I cut across Market and made slow laps through the Tenderloin.
I was coming down Jones, just crossing O’Farrell, when I saw a group of guys in hoodies, leaning against a gated door and sending furtive glances up and down the street. It seemed promising, and when I pulled up one of them approached me. A white guy in an obnoxious car—it wasn’t hard to imagine what I was looking for, and he asked.
“Pussy or drugs?”
“Neither. Looking for Reuben.”
“Don’t know him.”
“It’s worth five to me if you do.”
“Cop?”
“No. Tell him Itchy is looking for him.”
“I tole you, don’t know the guy.”
“You just lost ten bucks.”
“You said five.”
“See ya.”
I pulled out and to the end of the block, stopping at the light. I heard the guy’s sneakers on the pavement as he caught up.
“Give me ten, I get you Reuben.”
“You get me Reuben, I give you ten.”
“I know where he at. Come back in fifteen.”
I took a long, slow block. I pulled out the glass tube from the bodega, removed the corks, shook out the tiny fake rose, and tossed it aside. I stuffed the small chunk of Brillo into one end of the tube, shoving it about a third of the way down. An attractive brunette pulled up to me in a convertible with the top up and offered me a smile. I smiled back, gave her a hand signal saying, Take the top down, and she shook her head and laughed as I turned left at the red light. When I was stopped again I unwrapped the crack rock and set it in the console next to the newly minted pipe.
Fifteen minutes later, Reuben was riding shotgun. I handed him the rock and the pipe and took a slow ride up Taylor.
“Man, Itchy Crane! Where the hell you been!” Reuben had lost another tooth by the looks of it, but he was as jovial as ever. “Can’t believe you remembered my favorite flavor!” He snapped the rock in half, dropped it into the pipe, and took a deep hit.
“Reuben, keep your head down. We’re in a convertible.”
“No sweat, I know all the cops ’round here.” He reloaded. “But why you give that asshole ten? Anyone else woulda found me for two.” The economics offended him. That, and the fact that someone else had ten of my dollars that could have been his.
“I didn’t have time to fuck around,” I said. “Don’t worry, I got fifty for you if you can find out what I need.”
“Fifty?” He grinned, a wide grin with gaping holes. “Anything for my man Itchy.”
“There’s a girl who dances at Market Street. Name of Karyn, Karyn with a y. I need to find her.”
“You know where she works. Drop by.”
“I can’t go to her work, all right? But I want her. I want to know where she lives, or where she hangs out after hours.”
“Karyn with a y . . . what does she look like?”
“Redhead. Big tits.”
“Yeah . . .” He took a hit and held it in, talking without breathing. “Real sweet-looking?”
I nodded.
“I think I know her.”
“Tell her I’ll pay her five hundred bucks for a couple hours of her time.”
He spat out smoke and started coughing. “Five hunnerd? You crazy? You can get pussy for—”
“I didn’t say I wanted to sleep with her.” Economics. Reuben hated to see people overcharged. “I said, tell her she’ll get five hundred. No sex. Just a couple hours. I need her to take a ride with me.”
“You got it.”
“And Reuben, don’t use my name, all right? Tell her my name is Dan.”
“Dan. You got it.”
“You sure? You can find her?”
“No bullshit, Itchy, I know this girl. I tole you,” he said, singing it, “I know every ho in San Francis-co.” He let out a rattling, backfiring spasm of amusement. “I’ll get her this morning, see about the wheres and whens, and you call me at my sister’s place.”
“Your sister got her own place now?”
He nodded, too busy with the pipe to speak.
“That’s great.” I took down the number. “You want me to drive you back down?” We were almost at Columbus.
“Naw,” he said. “Since we here, I wanna go to the Lusty Lady! They got this new girl, she got so many tattoos! It don’t make my dick hard, but . . .” He shrugged. “Something about her, you know?”
“Women are mysterious creatures.”
“You know that’s right. And it only cost a quarter to look.”
I let him out and went home, pulled quietly into my garage, slipped the tracker into the glove box, and snuck up the stairs in the dark and into my bed.
19
I woke up around noon, feeling more hungover than if I’d actually been hungover. I made some coffee, casually pacing the kitchen as I waited for it to brew, not quite awake and only gently, almost blithely aware that I was being watched. How banal, how boring. How many such empty, everyday moments had been recorded—just me, alone in my house; my quiet, uncompelling life. I stirred sugar into my coffee and was irritated by a bit of crust in the corner of my eye. High drama in the Crane household. I went into the bathroom and threw some water on my face, and it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks.
My alibi.
I ran down to the Schoolhouse Deli and called the Chronicle.
“Give me Thomas Grange.” Horrible hold muzak, an anxious pause.
“Tom Grange.”
“Tom, you on deadline? It’s David Crane.”
“Itchy, wow, this is a blast from the past. I got a minute. How are you?”
“I’ve been better. Listen, I need a favor.”
“Big or small?”
“Just some info.”
“Shoot.”
“I need you to check the archives for any unsolved homicides close to these dates . . . you ready?”
“Go.”
“January 1, 1996, November 15, 1996, and August 18, 1997.” The dates from the three paintings.
“Anything in particular I should be looking for?”
“Nope. Yes or no: were there any homicides in the Bay Area on these dates.”
“Easy. Give me ten.”
Tom was a good guy, honest, and not a drunk. One of the few people I knew from the paper who wasn’t a complete scumbag. Gay, basically married, two dogs. I paced and smoked a couple and called him back.
“Yeah, David, you’re right on the money. Let’s see, New Year’s Day, ’96 . . . looks like just before two a.m. Alberto Martiartu, fifty-two, became the first murder victim of 1996. He was shot in the head in the hallway of the Dudley Apartments
at 172 6th Street . . . Says he was a Cuban immigrant with twenty-one aliases. Still unsolved. And just this past August . . . Lucius Rodgers, twenty-four, was shot at 8:55 a.m. in the driveway of his home . . . as he sat in his parked pickup in East Oakland listening to music, police said. No suspects, no motive. And this other one you have to remember: November 15, 1996. A BMW hit a hydrant at Steiner and Post streets. The driver was dead with a bullet in his back.”
I felt a cold shiver. “Really.”
“Yeah. Defense attorney Dennis Natali. Remember? They found all these connections between him and—what was the guy’s name? Here it is, Vietnamese gang boss Cuong Tran.”
I did remember. Natali was good friends with the DA, Terence Hallinan, and divided his time between attending high-class political fundraisers and defending alleged gangsters. Tran was big-time in the Tenderloin.
“That was a strange situation,” Tom said. “They were killed within minutes of each other. Says here cops found a phone number on Natali’s pager that led them to suspects in the Tran killing. And Natali had represented one of Tran’s codefendants in an earlier beef. But they haven’t solved it. This one is still out there.”
“Thanks, Tom, that helps a lot.”
“What’s this for?”
“Some college kid’s research paper. Thanks again. I’ll be in touch.”
It wasn’t just about the Daltons—there were other murders. The dates on the paintings matched up with three unsolved murders, and they matched when Charlie had handed off the guns to Conrad. They use a gun for a murder, they give it to Charlie, they get my prints, I’m a patsy.
Ashley did love me. The paintings—the surveillance—were my alibi. The scenes depicted in the paintings may not have been at the precise moments of the murders, but the flash drives told the whole story. I was home at the exact time of each murder. I would never have been able to explain my whereabouts. They were watching me to know when I was in a position to be suckered. But the surveillance itself proved I couldn’t have done it. The painting I didn’t have—the one Conrad took from the Dalton Gallery—must have another flash drive proving my innocence of the New Year’s Day killing.
But Conrad said I was also being set up for the Dalton murders and I couldn’t figure out how. Maybe the 9mm Baby Glock had something to do with it. No, I’d used it on the range—just hours before Dalton got hit. For Susan, I was already cleared. Maybe Conrad was bluffing, or they used one of the first three guns to kill the Daltons, or Charlie was lying, or all of the above, or none.
It didn’t matter. I was in deep shit. Why would anyone want to frame me for a murder—or several, for that matter? And why was I hired to find the girl who was trying to save me? I wondered which side McCaffrey was playing on and whether there were more than two sides.
And my guardian angel had vanished. I still didn’t know who Ashley was, how she fit into anything, or where to find her. But now I knew she was looking out for me. Whoever she was, she was trying to help. I wanted to meet her more than ever.
* * *
I went home and picked up the phone to call McCaffrey. His secretary put me on hold for a good five minutes, but I didn’t let it bother me.
“Itchy, what can I do you for?”
“McCaffrey, I don’t think I’m going to be able to find your girl for you.”
“What? What’s this about?”
“Look, you gave me nothing, I got lucky with a lead at a gallery—”
“You did. What happened?”
“Nothing. It was a wash.”
I let that drift across the line like tumbleweed on an Old West picture set. Something about the silence told me he knew otherwise.
“A wash?”
“Yeah. Turned out to be nothing. Listen, I just don’t think this girl wants to be found. I haven’t talked to anyone who’s seen her. She’s either dead or long gone. She’s not in San Francisco, McCaffrey, and the trail is ice cold.” He didn’t say anything. “You want me to deduct my expenses, give you your money back?”
“No, no, keep the cash, Itchy. That was the deal.”
“Well . . . sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“That’s all right. Thanks for trying.”
Of course it was bullshit. There was no way in hell I was off the case, not now, but I wanted whoever was listening to believe that I’d had enough, and that, if nothing else, I was no longer looking for Ashley. Maybe it would give me some breathing room. There was no way out of this case but through it; I couldn’t walk away.
I took a long, hot shower, put on some comfortable clothes, and double-checked that the tracker was in Delores’s glove box. Let them watch. I drove down Spruce to the strip mall at El Camino and parked in front of the Albertson’s. I walked across the lot to an electronics store and bought a pay-as-you-go cell phone, the kind that doesn’t require a credit card to secure. I needed a phone number, and no one would be able to trace this line to me.
I called Al at home.
“Mr. Crane, did it go all right last night?”
“It went great, Al. I owe you some money. Will you be at Hollywood tonight?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll stop by.”
I called Reuben at his sister’s place.
“Itchy,” he said, cackling, “I got yer ho. It’s her day off today too, so she’s waitin’ to hear from you.”
“Fantastic. I owe you money, Reuben.”
“Ain’t no thing. You call my sister next time you’re in the City, drop it by here. I owe her plenty of back rent.”
He gave me Karyn’s cell phone number and I called her up.
“Karyn?”
“Is this Dan?”
“This is.”
“Reuben said you were looking for a date.”
“I am. What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Waiting for you.” She was good at playing coy.
“It’ll be late. I live in the East Bay. Where will you be?”
“I don’t know, sugar, why don’t you call me when you’re on your way?”
“I will.”
I walked back over to the Albertson’s, did some leisurely grocery shopping, went home, and cooked a big breakfast of bacon, sausage, hash browns, fried eggs, and sourdough toast. I settled into my kitchen and read the paper back to front, ate slowly, made coffee, smoked cigarettes, and luxuriated in relaxation. Then I took a nap.
20
It was almost dusk and a little cool, the sky bright blue with high scattered clouds. I rode Delores along 101, top down as usual, feeling the wind in my face. I was almost at ease. I’d made a few trips to the basement, coming back up with grease on my hands, worrying a rag and holding random car parts. I even went so far as to put in a call to Gotelli’s to get a quote on a new carburetor. Hopefully, whoever was on duty at the deer blind would believe I was working on my car. I left the tracker on my workbench.
Karyn was expecting me. I figured with the proper persuasion—namely, the right amount of money—I could find out whatever she knew about Conrad, and, more importantly, convince her to get more information out of him. Conrad had a habit with this girl, and that made her his weakness.
I made a quick stop in the Tenderloin and paid off Reuben’s sister on my way to North Beach. I’d told Karyn to meet me at Tosca. I’ve always liked the place: its red vinyl booths, the enormous cappuccino machines, the signature coffee cocktails lined up on the bar waiting to be served, the opera and jazz on the jukebox. Besides, it’s in the heart of strip-club central, Karyn would know it, and no one would notice me and a stripper having a chat.
Karyn was easy to spot, perched on a barstool, putting on the face of an innocent, wearing too much lipstick and a full-length white faux-fur coat. She looked ridiculous, but no worse than half the hipsters in the room. It was still early, and the bar was only half full, still bringing in a mild happy-hour crowd. I went right up to the bar and sat on the stool next to hers.
“Karyn?” Half of her lip turned up a
t the edge. “I’m Dan. Reuben’s friend?”
She gave a full-fledged smile. “Hi. You’re much better looking than Reuben said you’d be.”
“Reuben never found me attractive. Let’s get a booth.”
“Um . . .” She tapped the bar top and looked at me expectantly. I realized she hadn’t yet ordered a drink.
“Where are my manners?” I got us a round and maneuvered her into a booth.
It didn’t take her long to get around to the eternal preoccupation: “Reuben said you wanted to give me five hundred dollars.”
I pulled out a cigarette but didn’t light it. “That’s true. I want . . . some of your time.” I was reaching for my lighter when my phone started going off. I hadn’t given anyone the number. “Excuse me,” I said, “would you give me just a second?”
“Take your time.”
I booked it outside. “Hello?”
“Mr. Crane? It’s Al.”
“Al? How the hell did you get this number?”
“I have caller ID, you called me from this number—I just took a chance.”
Of course. “What is it, Al?”
“It’s Conrad. He’s on his way over here.”
“To your place?”
“Yeah. He’s hopping mad. I don’t know what happened, but he said we’re paying you a visit. Something’s wrong. I never heard him like this.”
“You’re coming over now?”
“Soon as he gets here we’re going to your house.”
“All right.” My mind was flipping possibilities like a card counter in Reno. “Al—why did you call me?”
“I don’t want to see anything bad happen.”
“Try to stall him a bit, will you?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Karyn was chewing on her cocktail straw when I sidled back into the booth. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Business never stops.”
“I don’t mind.” She gave me a coquettish smile. “So, you were saying?”
I had to improvise, and quick. I slipped out a hundred-dollar bill. “Come with me to my place. Here’s a hundred, just for taking a ride with me. There’s four more in it for you if you like what I like, and if you don’t, no offense, I’ll bring you home.”
The Painted Gun Page 11