Betrayers nd-35

by Bill Pronzini

  Mantle deliberated again. Somewhere in the house a clock bonged; it was so quiet Tamara could hear the faint after-echoes.

  He said finally, “It’s my place to discuss this business with Mrs. Inman, not yours. Dr. Hawkins as well. They have a right to know the situation before I agree to do anything.”

  “That’s fair. Maybe you could convince them to go in, too. The more witnesses, the better.”

  “They may want their names kept out of it, if possible.”

  “But you’ll come with me in any case? If I have to go in alone, I won’t keep anybody’s name out of it.”

  “You seem to have left me no choice.”

  “Can you talk to them tonight?”

  “Not Mrs. Inman. She’s attending a charity benefit in San Jose. Sometime tomorrow. That should be soon enough to suit you.”

  “You don’t sound very grateful, Judge.”

  “It remains to be seen if I have anything to be grateful for.”

  Tamara laid one of her business cards on the desk in front of him. “You can reach me at one of those numbers anytime. The sooner the better, okay? For everybody’s sake.”

  Mantle didn’t answer. Didn’t say another word to her. Just got up and looked at her until she did the same, then ushered her out into the cold night.

  22

  The owner of the old two-toned van and the DDTDAWG license plate was an ex-con named Joseph Hoffman.

  Tamara got me that information on Thursday morning. She also tracked down Hoffman’s felony record. The crime that had landed him in Folsom for twenty-seven months had nothing to do with drugs and was the only blot on his record: receiving and selling stolen property. He’d owned a junk shop out near the Cow Palace, and when the cops raided it they found a storeroom full of small appliances, computers, and other goods taken in various burglaries throughout the city. He claimed he hadn’t known any of the stuff was hot; the judge and jury didn’t believe him. His sentence had been three years, with time knocked off for good behavior. Since his release eighteen months ago, he’d been living in Daly City, working for a reputable salvage dealer in South San Francisco, and apparently avoiding any further trouble with the law.

  Nothing in any of that to tie him to a middle school teacher like Zachary Ullman, at least on the surface. There was one potentially interesting fact: the police had found out about Hoffman’s fencing operation not on their own hook but through a tip from a source so reliable that they’d had no trouble getting a search warrant for the premises raid.

  The tipster had been Hoffman’s wife, Rosette.

  She’d also testified against him at his trial, claiming she’d discovered what he was up to by accident and felt it her duty to “do the right thing” and turn him in. The last honest citizen. But there were other motivations in such cases. One possibility was that she’d known about the fencing or suspected it all along, the marriage had turned rocky, and she’d made up her mind to throw Hubby to the wolves. Another was payback for some offense other than a failing marriage. A third was sheer malice. In any case, she’d divorced Hoffman immediately after he was convicted, taken her seven-year-old son and her share from the sale of the junk shop, and started a new life under her maiden name, Prescott. Current address: 1499 Javon Street, El Cerrito. Current place of employment: Sweet Treats Bakery, Fairmount Avenue, El Cerrito.

  She was the person to talk to. Nobody knows a man better than his ex-wife, or is more likely to dish up any dirt she has on him when the relationship ends badly. And that went double for an ex-wife who’d already been instrumental in putting her former hubby away in the slam for twenty-seven months.

  Sweet Treats Bakery was located at the outer edge of a massive shopping center that took up three or four blocks along San Pablo and Fairmount avenues. One of those places that dispense coffee and other beverages along with cakes, cookies, pies, fresh breads: windowed display cases and a counter along one wall, a few tables and chairs occupying the rest of the space.

  I can’t walk into a bakery without two things happening: the aromas make my mouth water and my stomach growl, and my nostalgia gene kicks in. Bakeries were a consistent draw when I was a kid in the Outer Mission. One in particular, an Italian place near where we lived that specialized in sourdough, focaccia, Pugliese, and anise Easter breads and Ligurian pastries. Nobody who grew up with those aromas in his nostrils can recall them without drooling.

  The smells in Sweet Treats were mild by comparison, but even with the Ullman business weighing on my mind, the saliva juices flowed. I hadn’t been hungry this morning, had settled for coffee and a soft-boiled egg before leaving the condo, and I hadn’t had any lunch yet. I wondered if they had Pugliese and if they did, if it was up to my standards. I can eat half a loaf of good Pugliese, warm, without butter or any other topping. Kerry was always after me to limit my carb intake, and usually I obliged her for the sake of my waistline. But Pugliese…

  The lunch trade had thinned out and only a couple of the tables were occupied. Two women worked the counter, both around forty, one thin and henna haired, one fat and dishwater blond. The thin one was waiting on a customer. The fat one stood by herself at the other end refilling one of the coffeemakers, so I went down there and smiled at her and asked if she was Rosette Prescott.

  She’d put on a smile in response to mine; it turned upside down at the sound of her name. “Yes, that’s me.” Tired voice, tired eyes-the kind of tiredness that has little to do with physical fatigue. Weltschmerz.

  “Could we talk privately for a few minutes? A personal matter.”

  She glanced over at the thin woman, then out at the remaining customers, before she leaned forward and said in an under-tone, “Look, if you’re here about the car payments, I-”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s about your ex-husband.”

  She had a round, soft, pale face, like well-kneaded bread dough, but when I said “ex-husband” it reshaped into hard, bitter lines. The hardness and bitterness were in her voice, too: “What about him? Who are you?”

  I showed her my license, holding the case up against my chest and shielding it with my body so only she could see it. “He’s involved in a case I’m investigating.”

  “I don’t care what he’s involved in.”

  “But I do, Ms. Prescott. The case is personal.”

  “What do you mean, personal?”

  “It concerns one of my family members.”

  She hesitated, glancing again at her co-worker. “If you’re gonna make me have anything to do with him, the answer is no.”

  “Just a few questions, that’s all. You’ll never see me again afterward.”

  “Or him?”

  “Or him. He’ll never know we talked.”

  “What you want to know… will it get him in trouble? The kind of trouble he was in before, or some other kind?”

  “It might.”

  “Then all right.” She went over to the henna-haired woman, said something to her that evoked a brief argument. When Rosette came back to where I waited, she made a follow me gesture and waddled through a swing door behind the counter.

  I stepped around and through into a big, empty bakery kitchen. Open at the far end was a cell-like enclosure, what’s called a break room-a table, a couple of chairs, a small refrigerator. She sank heavily into one of the chairs, puffing a little, and leaned forward to rub one of her thick ankles.

  “I wasn’t always this fat,” she said. “Big, but not fat. He made me this way. Joe, that son of a bitch. Just one more thing he did to me.”

  “An abuser?”

  “He never hit me, if that’s what you mean. But you don’t have to hit somebody to beat them up and beat them down.”

  “No,” I said, “you don’t.”

  “He tried to do the same thing to our boy. You know I have a son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chuck. He’s nine now. I got him away from Joe in time, I think. He’s doing okay in school; he don’t act out like he used to. He won’t gro
w up to be like his father, not if I can help it. He-” She broke off, flapped one hand in a weary way. “You don’t want to hear all this. And I can’t take more than ten minutes or Connie’ll throw a fit; it’s almost time for her break. Ask your questions.”

  “You may have already answered one of them-why you turned your husband in to the police four years ago. Because of the way he treated you and your son?”

  “No. That wasn’t the reason.”

  “Did it have anything to do with drugs?”

  “Drugs? No, he never had nothing to do with that crap; I’ll give him that much.”

  “Duty, then? Moral reasons?”

  “Duty’s what I said at the trial, that I did it on account of I found out about the stolen property and it wasn’t right to let him get away with it. I couldn’t tell nobody the real reason. I wanted to, I wanted to tell the cops when I turned him in, but I didn’t have no proof. Not anymore. My own damn fault.”

  “Proof of what?”

  Flesh rippled as she shook her head. Not in response to my question, at her bitter memories. “It would’ve been my word against his and they couldn’t have done anything to him. And I didn’t want Chuck to know, nobody to know, what kind of man I was married to. Stupid. I was so damn mad when I found out… I went a little crazy, you know? Got rid of it, burned it all up.”

  “You’re not talking about the stolen property…”

  “No, I knew about that already. Well, I didn’t really know; I didn’t want to know where the money was coming from. We were living pretty good, Chuck didn’t want for nothing except a decent father. No, it wasn’t that.” Her mouth thinned down until it resembled a knife slice in her doughy face. “It was the other goddamn thing.”

  “What other thing, Ms. Prescott?”

  She told me.

  And all the good, warm bakery smells suddenly turned rancid.

  23

  TAMARA

  More waiting.

  All day long she waited.

  Time seemed to contract, slow way down, as it had in high school before she found out how good she was with computers. Kept busy but still found herself clock-watching. And jumping a little every time the phone rang. But none of the callers was Judge Mantle.

  She did some work for Bill-a license plate check with the DMV that produced another yelp of protest from Marjorie, plus a deep b.g. search on the owner of the car. The name and info didn’t fit any of the agency cases. Something to do with Emily’s middle school teacher, maybe, and what was up with that? Bill didn’t want to talk about it, any more than she did about the Delmans and Operation Save. Secrets. The serious personal kind for him, too.

  Jake Runyon came in with a report on the Madison bail-jump case. Closed, but with an unexpected twist to what had seemed a routine investigation. Reading Jake’s report, she realized she hadn’t paid enough attention to the agency caseload the past couple of weeks. Too much on her mind, too much focus on nailing Antoine and Alisha. But that was no excuse for leaving contract work undone or giving it short shrift. Business to run here. She hadn’t even gotten around to the monthly billing yet.

  She attacked the backlog, and that helped make the time go by a little faster. Not much faster, though. Not fast enough.

  Noon hour came and went. Tamara worked right through it. Wasn’t hungry; too tensed up, waiting for the judge’s call.

  And it kept not coming.

  One o’clock. Two o’clock. Three calls, none from Mantle.

  Why? Hadn’t been able to get in touch with Viveca Inman? Still deliberating? Decided not to cooperate and was blowing her off? No, he wouldn’t do that-just blow her off. He knew she’d go to the cops without his cooperation if he forced her to. She was pretty good at reading people; Mantle wasn’t the kind of man to stick his head in the sand and hope it’d all go away. Whatever he decided, he’d call and tell her.

  So why the hell didn’t he?

  Three o’clock. Still nothing.

  Tamara got on the horn herself then. Found out from the judge’s aide at City Hall that he wasn’t on the bench or in chambers. He’d been in court this morning but then canceled his afternoon session and left “on personal business.”

  Home by now? No. The woman who answered the phone said he wasn’t there and she didn’t know when he would be; she’d expected him to be in court all day.

  Four o’clock. No word.

  Five o’clock. No word.

  Now Tamara was really wired. Shouldn’t be letting the delay affect her the way it was-a few more hours, even another day, wouldn’t make any difference. But damn, when you were close like this, when you wanted something as badly as she wanted Antoine and Alisha put away, all the waiting around couldn’t help but work on your nerves.

  Keep on hanging here or close up and go home? Her home and cell numbers, as well as the agency’s, were on the card she’d given the judge; he could reach her no matter where she was. Give it another hour, she thought-but all she was able to stand was another ten minutes. Stay in the office any longer and she’d start bouncing off the walls. New Olympic gymnastic event: wall-bouncing. Get herself started and she’d be a prime candidate for the gold.

  She locked the agency, ransomed her car from the parking garage. The Toyota’s engine was starting to make funny pinging noises. Horace’s hand-me-down had better not give her any trouble before she traded it in. Should’ve gotten rid of it weeks ago, when she’d moved out of the Sunset District apartment they’d shared, into her new flat on Potrero Hill. Promised herself she would, and probably would’ve if she hadn’t let that son of a bitch Lucas… Antoine… crawl into her life. First thing she’d do when this business was finished was dump that sucker and buy herself the best ride she could afford.

  The new crib was the entire second floor of a refurbished Stick Victorian on Connecticut Street, easily the nicest place she’d ever lived in the city. She’d only had it a little over a month, and with her life in upheaval the past three weeks there’d hardly been time for her to settle in. Still a stack of unpacked boxes to deal with, still some painting and other work to be done, before she could really start enjoying the place.

  As soon as she came in she checked her answering machine. No messages-not that that was surprising. Almost never were anymore; if somebody wanted to leave a phone message for her, they called the agency or went to her cell’s voice mail. The answering machine was something else she might as well get rid of. The landline, too, while she was at it. You just didn’t need either of them anymore these days.

  In the kitchen she poured herself a glass of merlot to try to unwind a little. The prospect of sitting around all evening, waiting for the judge to call, really would have her wall-bouncing. If she didn’t hear from him by seven thirty, she’d drive over to Monterey Heights and hope to surprise him at home.

  She’d just sat down in the living room, taken her first sip of wine, when the doorbell went off.

  Now who the hell was that? Not Vonda or any of her other friends; they never dropped over unannounced. You got solicitors in the evenings here sometimes-salesmen and political and religious prosletyzers. Well, she’d make short work of whoever it was. She was in no mood to talk to anybody tonight except Judge Alfred Mantle.

  The Victorian’s owners hadn’t bothered to have a communicator or door buzzer installed when they renovated it, so you had to go all the way down the inside stairs to find out who was ringing the bell. No problem if it was somebody you wanted to see, but an irritation if it wasn’t. Well, it was a minor inconvenience. Everything else about the flat made it worth the high rent she was paying.

  She hadn’t put the chain on the door when she came in, didn’t think to put it on before she threw the dead bolt and opened up. Mistake-big mistake.

  Soon as she turned the knob, a heavy weight slammed against the panel and drove it straight back into her face. Pain erupted, blood spurted from her nose, and the force of the blow sent her staggering backward along the short hall to the foot of the stairs.
Her heel stubbed against the bottom riser. And down she went against the stairs, another of the risers jamming hard into her back, the impact taking some of her breath away.

  Dimly, through a haze of hurt, she saw Antoine Delman come inside and push the door closed behind him, throw the dead bolt to lock it. Then he was standing over her, a smile like a rictus on his ugly, blocky face.

  “Hello, Tamara,” he said. “Hello, you fucking bitch.”

  24

  JAKE RUNYON

  He had two calls that afternoon on his way back to the agency from an interview on the new case Tamara had given him, a skip-trace for a prominent S.F. couple whose daughter had disappeared. The first call was from Bryn-something of a surprise, since it came during working hours. She seldom called him at all, letting him take the initiative, and never until after five o’clock.

  “Jake, I’m sorry to bother you like this; I know you’re busy-”

  “Not a problem. What’s up?”

  “I know we said tomorrow night, but… could you come over tonight instead?”

  There was a strained quality to her voice that made him ask, “Something wrong?”

  “… Yes. Something that happened today.”

  “What? You okay?”

  “Yes. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Can you come over?”

  “Right away, if it’s urgent.”

  “No, tonight’s soon enough.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. Any time you can make it.”

  New development with her health, the facial paralysis? He hoped that wasn’t it; it probably wouldn’t be good news if it was. Support or custody troubles with the ex-husband? No use speculating. He’d find out soon enough.

  But he was still wondering when the second call came in. Bill, this time. And he didn’t sound any better than Bryn had. Even more tense; his voice was as tight and flat as Runyon had ever heard it.