Betrayers nd-35

by Bill Pronzini

  “I wouldn’t say close,” Linkhauser said. “Hung out together sometimes.”

  “Were the brothers close?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. Always arguing about something. Coy used to beat up on Troy sometimes.”

  “Coy did? Not the other way around?”

  “Nah. Thing about Troy, he’s a mild guy, you know? Shy, laid-back. Go out of his way to avoid a fight.”

  “And his brother was the opposite?”

  “Well, not exactly opposite. Coy’s okay until something gets him riled up. Got a temper. Piss him off some way, he’d go after you. That’s the way he was as a kid, anyhow.”

  “Troy have a short fuse, too?”

  “No. Real easygoing kid.”

  “Never retaliated when Coy beat on him?”

  “Not that I ever saw.”

  “Was Troy afraid of Coy?”

  “Seemed that way to me.”

  Runyon said, “Coy must care about his brother, if he tried to get you to help him straighten out.”

  “Wasn’t his idea. It was Troy’s.”

  “Is that right? Then why was Coy the one who contacted you?”

  “Troy asked him to,” Linkhauser said. “Too shy and ashamed to come to me himself. This was after one of the times he got busted for possession and I guess he figured it was time to get clean. But he was hooked too deep and it didn’t last. Went right back on the stuff.”

  “Would Coy help him on his own, do you think? If he’s in big trouble like he is now?”

  “Sure, probably.” Linkhauser frowned. “Help him run away, you mean?”

  “Or hide out.”

  “I can’t answer that, man. It’s been three years since I seen either of them, like I said. Who knows what people will do when push comes to shove?”

  “Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Coy did want to hide him out. Any place you know of where he might do that?”

  Linkhauser shook his head.

  Runyon said, “Do you know Jennifer Piper?”

  “Who? Oh, that chick Troy was living with. What he saw in a skank like her I’ll never understand.”

  “You know anything about her? Where she comes from, who her friends are?”

  “Uh-uh. I only met her once and Troy never talked about her.”

  “Know any of his friends?”

  “No. I never saw him with anybody except the skank.” Linkhauser paused, frowning again. “What’ll happen to Troy if you find him? I mean, how much time in prison will he do?”

  “Depends. Three or four years, maximum, if he’s convicted on the dealing charge.”

  “Better that than being a fugitive, getting himself in deeper trouble.”

  “Much better.”

  Linkhauser looked off toward the loading dock. Thinking about something, making up his mind. “If Coy is helping him… what happens to him?”

  “Harboring a fugitive is a felony,” Runyon said. “But it doesn’t have to come to that.”

  “You wouldn’t bring charges against him? Coy?”

  “Troy’s the man I’m after, not his brother. The quicker I find him, the better for everybody concerned.”

  “… Yeah. Okay, then. Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut, but

  … Coy and his wife own a piece of rental property. Or did, anyway-I think she might’ve inherited it. They let Troy stay there for a few weeks after he first moved up from Bakersfield, until he got a place of his own.”

  “Where’s this property located?”

  “Can’t tell you that. Might’ve been S.F., but I’m not sure. Troy mentioned it once, that’s how I know about it, but I didn’t pay much attention to where it was. For all I know, they could’ve sold it by now.”

  “You did the right thing by telling me about it.”

  “I hope so,” Linkhauser said. “It’s hard to know what’s best for other people, you know? Half the time I don’t even know what’s best for me and my family.”

  16

  Everett Belasco was doing some repair work on his front stoop: down on one knee, a trowel in his right hand and a tray of wet cement beside him. As soon as he saw Helen Alvarez and me coming up his front walk, he put the trowel down and got slowly to his feet.

  He looked at me, at Mrs. Alvarez, back at me. “Back again so soon? How come?”

  “I’ve been out talking to Charley Doyle,” I said.

  “Doyle? Why?”

  “I caught him in a lie. About Mrs. Abbott’s alleged ghost.”

  “You mean what happened last night? You don’t think Charley-?”

  “No, he wasn’t the man in the sheet. But he knew of her fancy about her dead husband’s ghost when I questioned him two days ago. She only had the notion Monday night, and he hadn’t talked to her since he fixed her broken window. Somebody else had to tell him about it.”

  “Who? Helen?”

  “No, not me,” she said. I hadn’t told her why we were going to see Belasco-I wanted her along as a witness-but she was smart, a lot smarter than Doyle. Or Belasco, for that matter. From the hostile look she was directing at him, she’d already put two and two together. “I wouldn’t give that idiot the time of day.”

  I said, “Only one other person besides Mrs. Alvarez and me knew. You, Belasco. She mentioned it when we saw you in your garden Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Me? What about Leonard?”

  “I didn’t tell him until this morning,” Mrs. Alvarez said, “after that sheet nonsense. Or anyone else. Only you.”

  “And you think I told Charley Doyle? Why would I? I haven’t seen or talked to him in weeks.”

  I said, “When I got here this morning, you were on Mrs. Abbott’s porch. Did you go inside the house?”

  The sudden shift in questions bewildered Belasco. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Just answer the question. Were you inside her house this morning?”

  Mrs. Alvarez answered it for him. “No, he wasn’t. Not while I was here.”

  “Wasn’t any reason for me to go in,” he said.

  “The last time you were in there was when?”

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “More than a few days?”

  “A lot longer than that.”

  “Do you own a cat?”

  “A cat?” Now I really had him off balance. “What’s a cat got to do with anything?”

  “Oh, quite a bit. You don’t own one, do you?”

  “No. I don’t like cats.”

  “Are you left-handed, Mr. Belasco?”

  “… What?

  “You heard me. Left-handed.”

  “No. Right-handed. What the hell-?”

  “That bandage on your right hand. This morning you said you cut yourself slicing bacon.”

  “That’s right. So what?”

  “When you’re doing something like that and the knife slips, the cut is almost always on the other hand, the one you’re holding the bacon with. Since when does a right-handed man slice a slab of bacon with the knife in his left hand?”

  Belasco was sweating now, in spite of the cold. “So maybe I’m ambidextrous. What’re you trying to imply?”

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m saying that what’s under that bandage isn’t a knife cut; it’s a bite.” I held out my hand, palm down, so he had a clear look at the shallow iodine-daubed punctures on the webbing between thumb and forefinger. “A cat bite, just like this one.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong-”

  “Take off the bandage and prove it to us.”

  “No!”

  “Doesn’t matter, I don’t need to see it to know it’s a fresh bite, not more than twelve hours old. From the same cat that bit me-Mrs. Abbott’s Spike.”

  Belasco shook his head mutely.

  “Spike is an indoor cat, never allowed outside. And he likes to nip strangers when they aren’t expecting it. Somebody comes into his house in the middle of the night, he goes to investigate; and if the somebody doesn’t like cats, he senses it
and does more than just nip the intruder’s hand-he gives it a good chomp. Mrs. Abbott was woken up by Spike yowling and she thought it was because the intruder stepped on him. But the real reason he yowled so loud was you swatting or kicking him after he bit you.”

  “A poor defenseless animal,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “You ought to be kicked yourself, Ev Belasco, in a place that’ll do the most damage.”

  He ignored her. “Even if I was bitten by a cat, you can’t prove it was Spike. A neighborhood stray-”

  “Spike,” I said, “and the police lab can prove it. Test the bites on my hand and yours, match them to Spike’s teeth and saliva. Cat DNA doesn’t lie any more than human DNA does.”

  Belasco shook his head again, but not in denial. He knew he was caught; he’d have to be an idiot like Charley Doyle not to know it.

  “You’re not only the man in the sheet last night,” I said. “You’re the one who’s been harassing Mrs. Abbott all along. You live right here next door. Easiest thing in the world for you to slip over onto her property in the middle of the night. Hardly any risk at all.”

  Belasco said, “What reason would I have for hassling an old lady like Margaret?”

  “The obvious one-money. A cut of the proceeds from the sale of her property after she was dead or declared incompetent.”

  “That don’t make sense. I’m not a relative of hers-”

  “No, but Doyle is,” I said. “And you and Charley are buddies, play poker together regularly, have a few private drinks together. He’s not very bright and just as greedy as you are. Your brainchild, wasn’t it, Belasco? Inspired by that auction fiasco. ‘Hey, Charley, why wait until your aunt dies of natural causes-that might take years. Suppose we give her a heart attack, or drive her into an institution… either way you get immediate control of her property, then sell it to the Pattersons or some other real estate speculator for a nice fat profit. And I earn my cut by doing all the dirty work while you work up alibis to keep yourself in the clear.’ ”

  “Bastard!” Mrs. Alvarez said fiercely. “Dirty swine!”

  A trapped look had come into Belasco’s eyes. He stood poised and rigid now, massaging his bandaged hand with the other, as if he were thinking of breaking into a blind run. I hoped he would; I wouldn’t have minded popping him for Margaret Abbott’s sake.

  But he didn’t do it. After a few seconds he went all loose and saggy, as if somebody had cut his strings. He took a stumbling step backward, tripped over the lowest of the stairs, and sat down jarringly on the next one above. Then he put his head in his hands.

  “I never done anything wrong before in my life,” he said. “Never. But the bills been piling up, it’s so goddamn hard to live these days, and they been talking about laying people off where I work and I was afraid I’d lose my house… ah, God, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  Derisive snort from Helen Alvarez. Nothing from me. I’d heard that kind of self-pitying, self-justifying explanation for criminal behavior too many times before.

  Belasco lifted his head, aimed a moist, beseeching look at my client. “I never meant for Margaret to die, Helen. You got to believe that. Just force her out of there so Charley could take over the house, that’s all. I like her, she’s been a good neighbor. I never meant to hurt her.”

  Mrs. Alvarez wasn’t buying any of that. She called him a couple more names, one of which surprised me and made him cringe. He hid his face in his hands again.

  Another small mind at work. Half-wits and knaves, fools and assholes-more of each than ever before, proliferating like weeds in what had started out as a pristine garden. It’s a hell of a world we live in, I thought. A hell of a mess we’re making of the garden.

  Helen Alvarez and I left Belasco sitting there on his stoop-he wasn’t going anywhere; he had no place to go and he knew it-and went in to gently break the news to Margaret Abbott. I thought it might be a difficult job, that she’d be shocked and upset hearing that her nephew and a longtime neighbor had both betrayed her trust, but she took it better than I’d expected. I guess maybe you get philosophical about most things, even the evils in the world, when you’re eighty-five. Mrs. Alvarez had been and still was considerably more outraged than Mrs. Abbott.

  While we were talking, Spike came into the room and hopped up on Mrs. Abbott’s lap. She said, stroking him, “You’re a hero, dear. Yes, you are.” Then she sighed and asked me, “Will both Charley and Everett go to prison?”

  “If you press charges against them, they’ll probably get some jail time.”

  “For how long?”

  “Breaking and entering, trespassing, malicious destruction of property, intent to defraud, intent to inflict bodily harm… with a strict judge, they could each get three years or more.”

  “Oh. That seems like a long time.”

  “Not long enough, if you ask me,” Helen Alvarez said. “Not nearly long enough.”

  “Do I have to press charges against them?”

  The question surprised Mrs. Alvarez. She said, “Of course you do, Margaret. After what they put you through? How could you not press charges?”

  “I don’t know. Three years behind bars…”

  “Margaret, listen to me; you can’t just let them walk away from this. What if they try something like it again? They could, you know. They’re just stupid and venal enough, both of them.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But still…”

  My cell phone, with its burbling ringtone, interrupted the discussion. Inconvenient as usual, but at least this time I wasn’t in the car driving.

  Tamara. “I’ve got that name you asked for this morning. Z.U. at Whitney Middle School.”

  “Hold on a minute.” I excused myself, went out onto the front porch. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Zachary Ullman. He’s the only Z.U. at the school.”

  “What’s his record like?”

  “Clean,” she said. “Never been in trouble. Not even so much as a parking ticket.”

  “Parking ticket? A middle school student can’t be old enough to drive.”

  “He’s not a student. Is that what you thought?”

  “What is he, then?”

  “He’s a teacher,” Tamara said. “History and social studies. Been at Whitney eleven years.”

  My God. The tin box, the cocaine… one of Emily’s teachers!

  17

  TAMARA

  Third time roaming around the Western Addition was the charm.

  One light brown five-year-old Buick LeSabre parked on Steiner Street a block and a half from Psychic Readings by Alisha.

  She’d left work early, headed over to the neighborhood again-compulsive about it now-and her figuring had finally paid off. Fresh excitement made her thump the steering wheel with her fist. She hunted up a parking space for the Toyota, hurried back to the Buick. The right front fender hadn’t been visible when she drove by, but she knew it would be scraped and dinged, and it was. No question this was Lucas’s car.

  She looked both ways along the street. A few pedestrians, but no familiar black face. First thing, she noted the license plate number and quickly wrote it down. Then, casually, as if she owned the damn thing, she tried the passenger side door. Locked. She bent to peer through the window. Front seat: empty. Backseat: empty except for a light jacket that she didn’t recognize. Another check of the passersby, and around to the driver’s door. Also locked. So no chance at whatever ID items, such as an insurance card, he might keep in the dash compartment.

  Not that it mattered, necessarily. The plate number would be enough to ID the registered owner-either Lucas or Mama. Unless they’d switched license plates for some reason…

  Better not be another dead end, Tamara thought. Not when she was so close… better not be.

  It wasn’t.

  The Buick’s owner was Alisha J. Delman, with an address in Oxnard. So that was where Mama and Lucas had come from, Southern California. Where they’d been living when the car was registered five years ago, anyhow.
/>   Tamara text-messaged Felice at the SFPD to ask for a quick callback. When Felice complied a few minutes later, she grumbled-as Marjorie at the DMV had grumbled-about being called on too often lately. Some smooth-talking and the promise of a few extra dollars for services rendered and Felice gave in and agreed to run Alisha J. Delman’s name through the system.

  “Do it ASAP, okay? If you find anything, call me right away. And if there’s a mug shot in the file, e-mail it to me.”

  “Hey, I can’t do that,” Felice said. “Information is one thing, but I can’t be e-mailing files-”

  “Oh, hell, Felice. Nobody’s looking over your shoulder down there.”

  “Not right now, maybe. But there’s a review coming up next month.”

  “You worried about that?”

  “No, not really, but-” “Just this one time. I won’t ask again.”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ve heard that before. Why do you want a mug shot? You’re not planning to download it, show it to anybody?”

  “No. Just for my own information. I’ll delete it right away.”

  “… All right, I’ll do it for another fifty.”

  “Damn, girl! You getting greedy now?”

  “I need the money, Tam.”

  “I’ll give you twenty-five.”

  “Uh-uh. Got to be fifty for something like this.”

  Everybody had their hand out these days, not that you could blame them with the economy in the tank. The fifty dollars would have to come out of her pocket, too.

  “Okay, fifty. But this one time only.”

  “Same with e-mailing files,” Felice said.

  She called back twenty minutes later. And the info she had was worth five times fifty dollars.

  Alisha J. Delman, fifty-three years old, African American, had a record dating back to the mid-1980s. Misdemeanors, mostly, in the L.A. and San Diego areas: operating illegal fortune-telling businesses and offering psychic-reading services without a license. But there were two felony charges, one for a bait-and-switch con game, the other for a charity swindle that sounded like it might be the prototype of Operation Save-bilking investors in a nonexistent company that was supposed to help black home owners avoid foreclosure. She’d served two years in Tehachapi for her part in the swindle.