Finnegan's Week (1993)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "I can understand that," Nell said.

  "But by the time I gave it to the meat wagon, the ants had bought it!"

  "Whaddaya mean bought it?"

  "Croaked. All the ants went tits-up." Then he added, "Sorry, ma'am. Belly-up."

  After Nell thanked the kid for the info, she called San Diego P. D. and received the message loud and clear from a detective at Central that if they could get the time to do a follow-up at the pottery shop they'd try to get around to it.

  Nell hung up, thinking, sure, in this decade or the next? Somehow she believed that the hazardous waste could be located. Or did she just want to talk to Detective Finnegan again? She wasn't sure.

  It turned out that Fin didn't have to help with the drive-by homicide after all, so he said to Maya Tevitch, "I thought this was my lucky day. I might even get another one of those letters from Publishers Clearing House telling me I won enough to save Somalia."

  Fin had thought several times about Nell Salter's fog lights, and was truly curious to see how well she'd aged. He believed that babes who're looking down the barrel at forty-something are anxious to prove they've still got it. He dialed her number.

  "Nell Salter," she said, when she answered. He liked babes with full-throated voices, but he hoped it didn't mean she had a neck like Maya Tevitch, which was a size larger than his own.

  "It's Finnegan," he said. "I got some news about the stolen van."

  "I was just thinking about calling you" she said. "I already phoned the CHP and found out all about it."

  "Yeah? So what happened?"

  "Yesterday on I-five near Mission Bay, the driver of the van jumped out and got dusted running across the freeway."

  "Was it a high-speed pursuit or what?"

  "Nope, he just parked by the center divider and jumped out yelling and running. Right into a Greyhound bus, among other vehicles. Like he was out of his head."

  "Any hazardous material in the truck?"

  "Like a lawyer's conscience, meaning there was none."

  "No leads at all?"

  "He had paperwork for some pottery he'd hauled from Tijuana to Huerta's Pottery Shed in Old Town. I can't convince anybody at Central to check it out right away, so I'm going up there. Might find a lead as to where he dumped the stuff."

  "How's about if I stop by your office and pick you up?" Fin suggested. "I'll go with you."

  Nell Salter figured correctly that his motive was not investigation but seduction. She said, "My partner's on vacation. I got a lotta work to do today, but how about tomorrow?"

  "Yeah, I'm busy too," Fin said. "Ain't civil service hell? Tomorrow's perfect. I know a German bar that makes their own beer. They play Barry Manilow tapes, and if that ain't bad enough, they just discovered potato skins. The cutting edge of hip if you're from a farm in Bavaria. The place is so depressing your own misery disappears for a while. Whaddaya say we check out the pottery shop and go have a beer?"

  The phone line was quiet for a moment; then she said, "I can't resist an enticing invitation like that. I'll meet you in Old Town at four-thirty tomorrow afternoon." Before she hung up, Nell said, "There's one more bit of news that might mean something. The dead guy's foot was cut off and the ants tried to take it home. Except they all died. And anticipating your avid interest in all this I've asked that the medical examiner send blood and tissue samples to a specialty lab ASAP to discover why the ants died. And I'm gonna phone the hauling company and find out exactly what they were hauling in case tomorrow we get a lead on where the thief dumped it."

  "Okay," Fin said, wondering if he'd made a mistake. This babe was actually interested in doing police work!

  Late that afternoon Jules Temple crawled all over his bobtail van like a live ant on a dead foot. He'd gone to the tow yard with Abel Durazo to pick up the van, and before he'd even completed the paperwork Jules had looked in the glove compartment, under the seat, behind the seat, under the rubber floor mats and inside the cargo area before he was satisfied that the manifest was not there.

  He was particularly elated to learn from the police that the driver of the van, presumably the thief who stole it, was a Mexican national with a police record. Which meant that the waste was probably in Mexico!

  As the cops saw it, the stolen van had been driven south of the border, cold-plated, crudely painted to get rid of the company name, and used to haul merchandise for a Tijuana pottery maker who was no doubt aware of the truck theft because the invoice found in the van wrongly showed that the pottery was owned by the deceased.

  "Are you sure there were not any documents of mine in the truck?" Jules asked the detective who'd notified him.

  "Like your registration? No, they got rid of that," the detective said.

  "But was there anything of mine?"

  "Like what?"

  "Any paperwork? Anything at all?"

  "There was nothing in the truck to tie it to Green Earth Hauling and Disposal," the detective said. "Naturally, the thief didn't want U. S. Customs to make that connection when the van came back north."

  "He must've thrown away my manifests," Jules said.

  "Of course he'd throw away any paperwork."

  "That'll cause me some extra trouble," Jules Temple said. "But never mind, I'm just happy to get the van back."

  "I doubt you'll ever hear from the Mexican side about your hazardous waste if that's where it got dumped," the detective said.

  "Of course not," Jules said, cheerfully. "Somebody'11 dehead the drums and make barbecue ovens for pigs. They might even cut them horizontally and use them for tubs to bathe their babies in. Well, thanks again. I'll write a letter of commendation to your boss."

  After Jules hung up, he thought about calling Burl Ralston to assuage his fears. But then he thought, fuck him, let the old bastard percolate. He deserved it for even thinking about ratting off Jules Temple to the Environmental Protection Agency.

  For the rest of the afternoon Jules went to a topless bar down on Midway. There was a new dancer he'd heard about who could set off the Richter scale. Jules was dead serious about taking the $743,000 he was going to net from the sale of his business and investing it in a club that would drive every other joint out of business. There was a market for upscale clientele including Asian businessmen, not just for the MTV generation who seemed to frequent those places. Jules had lots of ideas.

  The strange odyssey of the bobtail van was the topic of conversation most of that day at Green Earth Hauling and Disposal. Of course, the majority of the conversation concerned Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate, who were enjoying the attention. Both were happily surprised that Jules Temple had no intention of firing them even though he'd as much as accused them of stealing his $500.

  Abel kept his share of the cash at home in a bedroom that he rented from a Guatemalan family. On Saturday night, Shelby lost most of his in a bikers' bar in National City, too fried on crystal meth to be gambling on a game of pool, but doing it nonetheless.

  Shelby and Abel had speculated privately about why the boss hadn't fired them, finally deciding that, until escrow closed, Jules Temple didn't want to make personnel changes that might send a signal to the future owner that there were problems at Green Earth. He wouldn't want the guy to rethink the purchase.

  It was during one of these conversations that Abel said to Shelby, "Tell me, Buey, was joo berry much scared when we make the report? And the cop he say, 4Sure. Money een glove box. Sure." Was joo scared like me?"

  "I ain't scared a no cops," Shelby bragged. "They can't jist search people without a good reason. This ain't Mexico, dude. He mighta figgered the money was on us but he couldn't do nothin about it."

  "I was scared, 'mano," Abel said. "That money feel like a bomb een my pocket!"

  For the first time, Shelby remembered that on Friday night he'd had the money in the pocket of his leather jacket. With the manifests from North Island and Southbay Agricultural Supply. For the first time he realized that the manifests were still in the pocket of the jacket.r />
  "I fergot to toss them manifests away," he said to Abel. "They'll still be in my jacket."

  "Toss them," Abel said.

  "I'll toss 'em tonight," Shelby said. "The jacket's in my bitch's closet."

  And he would've done that if he hadn't decided to stop for one drink in Imperial Beach, where a biker he knew sidled up and said, "I can let you have a quarter a go-fast for twenny bucks. This special sale can't be repeated."

  Shelby couldn't resist. He bought a quarter of a gram of methamphetamine, got zombied-out, and forgot all his good intentions.

  A day that had started well for Jules Temple ended on a troubling note when the phone rang just as he was leaving for home.

  "Mister Temple," the telephone voice said. "This is Nell Salter. I'm an investigator with the District Attorney's Office, investigating environmental crimes."

  "Yes, and what can I do for you?"

  "It's about your stolen van," Nell said. "The thief who was killed in it may've had a toxic substance in his body."

  "I wouldn't doubt that," Jules said. "Probably a doper, huh?"

  "Organophosphate poisoning might cause some of the things observed."

  "Like a pesticide?"

  "Possibly," Nell said. "What I'm wondering is, could he have been contaminated when he dumped your hazardous waste? What exactly were your people hauling?"

  Jules's mind was racing! The goddamn waste just might turn up somewhere! That fucking Mexican thief! Jules said calmly and truthfully, "The navy's waste was contaminated diesel fuel. And one drum from Southbay Agricultural Supply contained Guthion."

  "Guthion," Nell said. "That's a dangerous insecticide."

  "It sure is," Jules said.

  Nell said, "That'd explain his bizarre behavior when he ran wildly into freeway traffic. He was probably hallucinating."

  "This case is interesting," Jules said. "What're you gonna do now? Search for the missing drums?"

  "Since the truck got to Tijuana, the drums might be there," Nell said. " Unless he dumped them somewhere between Imperial Beach and the border. The police and sheriffs have been notified, of course. I'll make a few calls to Tijuana."

  "I see," Jules said. "To trace the dead man's activity?"

  "As best I can," Nell said. "There's a remote possibility I might come up with something. Somebody else may've been contaminated."

  "This is very interesting!" Jules said. "I've never been part of an investigation before. Please let me know what's going on and if I can help you in any way, you only have to call."

  Jules Temple hung up the phone without telling Nell Salter that Detective Bobbie Ann Doggett had questioned his haulers about a separate crime entirely! Jules didn't know why, but his instinct told him he should not put Bobbie Ann Doggett and Nell Salter together. He sensed that it'd be better for him if the two investigators pursued separate criminal inquiries, and never crossed paths. For the first time, Jules Temple seriously considered the possibility that his employees might be responsible for the theft at North Island.

  Chapter 14

  San Diego's Old Town -- wildly popular with the city's vital tourist industry -- was never one of Fin's favorite haunts, even though a lot of cops frequented an Old Town restaurant that served pretty fair carnitas, homemade tortillas, and decent margaritas, all of which tended to attract happy-hour working women.

  There wasn't much left in Old Town of the Spanish period when Father Junipero Serra and the soldiers of the Presidio brought the Gospel to the local Kumeyaay whether the Indians liked it or not. There was some evidence that they didn't, in that the peace-loving Kumeyaay destroyed the friars' original mission.

  The early nineteenth century brought the Mexican period and with it large adobes, including some impressive haciendas with whitewashed walls, tile roofs, patios and fountains. One of those old haciendas, actually built for a rich Peruvian, had been transformed into a restaurant with courtyard dining, and it packed in the tourists. But most of the surrounding shops sold items that could be purchased more cheaply in Tijuana.

  A grassy square in the middle of Old Town Plaza was the best p&rt of the whole shebang, as far as Fin was concerned. It was there in the pedestrian area where he'd strolled with ex-wife number two and made the disastrous mistake of proposing marriage, after guzzling five margaritas. He'd never enjoyed margaritas since.

  Huerta's Pottery Shed was larger than the other shops, in that the pots required large display space. Alberto Huerta, the second-generation owner of the shop, sold glazed pottery for cookware and serving, and decorative pottery for plants and flowers, specializing in cactus pots with watering ports. Some of his pottery was designed in the shape of chickens, pigs, sheep, and of course, bulls.

  Nell Salter was late, so Fin decided to go it alone and get it over with. He figured that any acquaintance of the late thief Jose Palmera wasn't about to confess and beg for leniency.

  Alberto Huerta was surprised that afternoon when a rather slight man in a herringbone sport coat entered his shop and showed him a badge.

  "You took delivery of a truckload of pots a couple of days ago," Fin said to the shop owner.

  "Yes, that's right."

  Alberto Huerta didn't look like somebody who'd know dick about a hot van and a cold thief, but since it was a bogus investigation anyway, Fin said, "The driver got killed in an accident after he left you."

  "He did? My god!"

  "Did you know him well?"

  "He told me his name was Pepe Palmera. I never saw him before, but we've done business with Ruben for years. That's who makes the pots in Tijuana, Ruben Ochoa."

  "The paperwork indicated that the driver was the owner of the pottery business."

  "They do that down there," Alberto Huerta explained. "They make up all kinds of paperwork to get past U. S. Customs and deliver their loads up here. It's a hard life down there so they learn to cut through the U. S. red tape. That driver didn't own a single pot, I promise you."

  "That was a special van," Fin said. "It was loaded with drums of toxic waste when it got stolen last Friday. I've got a colleague who wants to know where the thieves dumped the waste."

  "I can't help you with that," the shopkeeper said. "A stolen truck? You might try Ruben Ochoa in Tijuana. Maybe he can help you." Then he added, "Toxic waste? Those people have enough to worry about without us giving them our poison. Let me get Ruben's address and phone number for you. I don't think he'd knowingly do business with a truck thief."

  "You sure about that?"

  "Well..." Alberto Huerta shrugged apologetically. "They're poor people, aren't they?"

  He went into the back room and when he returned he gave Fin a piece of paper with the pottery maker's Tijuana address and phone number on it.

  "Here's my card," Fin said. "If you hear anything that I should know, gimme a call."

  Alberto Huerta nodded, anxious to help the customer standing in the doorway. She was a tall woman in a red cable-knit turtleneck. She had shapely legs revealed to advantage in a long skirt with a front slit. Alberto Huerta liked the way her hair had that I-just-got-out-of-bed look. She looked boldly at everyone in the shop. And her nose, it was slightly bent, obviously having been broken. On a fine-looking woman, the broken nose was strangely exciting, the shopkeeper thought.

  After Fin spotted Nell, his thoughts were instantly similar to Alberto Huerta's -- about the long legs, and the go-to-hell hairdo -- but especially about the nose. In 1984, when acting jobs were more plentiful, he'd done a local TV commercial with a model whose nose had been broken in a jet-ski accident. Her agent had tried to persuade her to leave it as is but she got it fixed, after which her modeling career went nowhere. Fin told her to rebreak it.

  "Yo, Nell!" Fin said, and her firm handshake gave him goose bumps.

  "Sorry I was late," Nell said, as they walked toward his car after a quick briefing.

  She'd offered to drive, but he wanted her to see his Vette. "He didn't seem to know diddly," Fin said. "I bet your toxic goop got dumped
in T. J."

  "Nothing unusual in that," Nell said. "The next generation in that town's gonna be Ninja Turtles."

  "This is mine," he said, when they got to the Vette. He unlocked the door on her side and offered his hand as she settled into the leather seat.

  Decent manners, Nell thought. And he was kinda cute, but pretty small for a cop. This actor was not the leading-man type, a second banana, maybe. The guy that doesn't get the girl, hard as he tries. Still, he had soft gray eyes and didn't have a macho cop mustache, thank god.

  She hadn't found a man worth sleeping with in seven months, not since St. Patrick's Day after a boozy party for D. A. investigators. Then, after five dates with the guy, she'd found out that the lying bastard was married.

  When Fin fired up the Vette he revved the engine to let her feel the power. Then he said, "Now that all the hard police work's done, do you really want a beer or shall I take you someplace nice?"

  "To that German saloon," she said. "You made it sound slightly better than an emergency call to a shrink."

  "I was kinda lying about the beer," Fin confessed. "Actually their suds is the kinda stuff they use in Germany to kill potato bugs with. Lemme take you somewhere else."

  "Speaking of bugs," Nell said, "I think we're gonna get a lab report from the medical examiner saying that Palmera had been exposed to an organophosphate."

  "What's that?"

  "In this case an insecticide called Guthion. That's what they were hauling when the truck got ripped off."

  "Poetry in that," Fin said. "The thief steals poison and it poisons him."

  "I just wanna know if it got somebody else. And where the hell is it, that's what I wanna know."

  He took the Garnet turnoff to Pacific Beach, saying, "You've held up real well in the years since I last saw you."

  "They say that about old buildings."

  "That didn't come out right," Fin said. "I'm nervous. You're the first woman that's been in my Vette since last June."

  "Your dance card can't look that bad."

  "It's because of my last divorce," Fin said. "I'm a three-time loser. Every time somebody rides in my Vette I marry her. I've learned to ask dates if they mind riding the bus."