Breakdown nd-18

by Bill Pronzini

  Ms. Melendez came back pretty soon and said that Mr. Lujack would be right out, why didn’t we have a seat. So we each had a seat. The chairs were as uncomfortable as they looked. “Right out” translated to five minutes; then the near inner door opened and Coleman Lujack favored us with his presence.

  He was not much to look at-a drab, rabbity version of his brother, who by most standards qualified as dapper and handsome. Coleman was in his early forties, a couple of years older than Thomas; slight of build, sparse of hair the noncolor of lint. His brown suit didn’t quite fit him properly, his blue shirt was wrinkled, and the knot in his tie was crooked. If he’d had ink-stained fingers, you would have sworn he was a minor company clerk.

  He greeted us diffidently, put dampness on my hand when he shook it, and ushered us inside to his private office. It was small and windowless, and as disheveled as he was. Judging from a couple of sporty prints on the walls, and a carved and painted mallard decoy on one corner of his desk, shooting ducks was what he liked to do in his spare time. Trying to shoot ducks, anyway. As nervous as he was, I would have put my money on the ducks. I would also have been afraid to hunker down in a blind with him and a loaded shotgun.

  Coleman removed catalogs from one of the two visitors’ chairs, mates of the ones out front, and plunked them down on top of a boxy piece of furniture that pretended to be a solid-block table but was actually a common variety of floor safe. He said, “Sit down, sit down,” and then went behind his desk and did the same himself. He lit a cigarette before he said, “Why are you both here? You find out something to help clear Tom?”

  I said, “No, not yet.”

  He waited for me to go on, and when I didn’t he asked in his nervous way, “Well, then? What can I do for you?”

  “Your brother didn’t come in today. Why?”

  “He had an outside appointment.”

  “Who with?”

  “One of our suppliers in Emeryville.”

  “What time was the appointment?”

  “Eleven this morning, with lunch afterward.”

  “You talk to him today?”

  “No, not since last night. Why are you-”

  “You saw him last night, after work?”

  “At my home, yes.”

  “Social occasion?”

  “We had business matters to go over.”

  “What time did he arrive?”

  “Around seven-I don’t remember exactly.”

  “How long did he stay?”

  “Until nine.”

  “You’re sure it was nine? Not eight or eight thirty?”

  “It was nine. He mentioned the time, said he’d better be getting home. He called Eileen to tell her he was on his way.”

  “Was anyone else there?”

  “Working with us, you mean? No. But my wife was home.”

  “Did she see your brother? Can she verify that he didn’t leave until nine?”

  “Yes, sure,” Coleman said, frowning. A long ash broke loose from his cigarette and fragmented on the desk; he brushed it off agitatedly. “Why are you asking so many questions? Has something happened?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Eberhardt said, “Nick Pendarves was almost run down and killed last night. Outside the bar he frequents. He says your brother was driving the car.”

  Coleman gaped at him. “You … are you serious?”

  “Don’t we look serious, Mr. Lujack?”

  “But my God! You can’t believe that Tom …”

  “Not if he was with you at nine o’clock.”

  “He was. I told you he was. Pendarves didn’t tell the police Tom tried to kill him …?”

  “Not as far as we know,” I said. “What he did do was make some veiled threats. I was there; I heard him.”

  “Threats? What kind of threats?”

  “The nonspecific kind.”

  “Christ. He wouldn’t do anything violent, would he?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “Tom … does he know about this?”

  “I tried to call him last night. From what you tell us, he was at your home. I told his attorney about it this morning.”

  Coleman shook his head. “You’re sure Pendarves is telling the truth? He really was almost run down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he claim he actually saw the driver of the car? If he does, then it proves he’s an unreliable witness-”

  “He doesn’t. He’s assuming it was Thomas.”

  “The same sort of assumption he made three weeks ago,” Coleman said bitterly. “Damn the man. Damn him.”

  Eberhardt said, “That’s not the only reason we’re here, Mr. Lujack. There’s another little matter we’re interested in.”

  “I don’t … what matter?”

  “Illegal aliens.”

  There was a silence. From the factory came the steady hum and whine of machinery, a voice yelling something in Spanish; in here, the only sound was the quickened rasp of Coleman’s breathing. He had quit looking at Eberhardt and me. His eyes followed the movement of his fingers as he removed another cigarette from the pack, lit it from the butt of the one he had burning. The office was already thick with smoke, and what he added to it now made me cough. I swatted at a drift of the pale death, sent some of it back his way.

  “Well, Mr. Lujack?”

  “What about illegal aliens?” he said to his hands.

  “You or your brother should have told us you were employing them.”

  “Why? It has nothing to do with your investigation.”

  “Maybe it does,” I said. “It’s a can of worms anyway- one Pendarves might just open up on you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Something he said last night. He knows you’ve got a factory full of undocumented workers, and he’s got a mad-on against your brother. He might decide to blow the whistle to the INS.”

  “Christ! As if Tom and I don’t have enough problems …”

  Eberhardt said, “Nobody forced you to hire illegals.”

  Coleman spread his hands defensively. “A lot of small businessmen do it these days. It’s a matter of economics-”

  “It’s also against the law.”

  “I know that. But companies like ours have to cut costs to stay in business. Our profit margin-”

  “We’re not interested in your profit margin or your excuses,” Eberhardt said. “All we’re interested in is how it affects the job we were hired to do. Somebody killed Frank Hanauer, and that somebody had to have a reason.”

  “It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with our hiring practices.”

  “No? What makes you so sure?”

  “It just couldn’t, that’s all.”

  “Did Hanauer approve of employing illegals?”

  “Of course he approved.”

  “No trouble between him and your brother about it?”

  “No. None.”

  “Trouble between Hanauer and an illegal?”

  “Not that I know about.”

  “Your brother and an illegal?”

  “No. I told you before-Frank got along with everyone and so does Tom. Neither of them had any enemies here.”

  “Hanauer had one somewhere,’” I said.

  “Well, it wasn’t Tom.”

  “Big turnover rate among the illegals, is there?”

  “They come and go.”

  “But some stay on. Some have been here a while.”

  “We always try to keep good workers.”

  “Rafael Vega one of them?”

  “Rafael? He isn’t an illegal.”

  “But he is in charge of hiring them?”

  “… Yes.”

  “You give him carte blanche on who and when and how many?”

  “Mostly. He’s the shop foreman. And he knows those people; he lives among them.”

  Those people. “So maybe he also knows something you don’t-something that’ll help clear your brother.”

  “He doesn’t,” Coleman sa
id. “If he did he would’ve come forward by now.”

  “Unless he doesn’t know he knows it,” Eberhardt said. “Maybe nobody asked him the right questions. How about if you send for him and we’ll see what kind of answers he gives us.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “Off work today, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Called in sick?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Uh-huh. Lot of people off work today. Your brother, Vega, Pendarves.”

  “Coincidence. You can’t make anything out of that.”

  “Maybe not. Tell us about Vega.”

  “Tell you what? He’s an excellent worker, very dependable.”

  “Except for today.”

  Coleman didn’t say anything.

  “How long’s he been working for you?”

  “Seven years.”

  “How does he get along with the undocumented workers?”

  “Very well. How many times do I have to tell you that we’ve never had any trouble here at the factory?”

  “Just one big happy family,” Eberhardt said sardonically. “You wouldn’t mind letting us have Vega’s home address, would you?”

  Coleman crushed out what was left of his second cancer stick, nibbled at his lower lip like a rabbit working on a piece of celery. “I’ll tell Ms. Melendez to give it to you,” he said, and reached for the telephone, and then paused with his hand on the receiver. “Is that all? If there’s nothing else, I have work to do.”

  “Another good worker,” Eberhardt said. “No, there’s nothing else. Not right now, anyway.”

  We got on our feet. Coleman said,“You don’t intend to report us to the INS, do you? I mean, it would do Tom more harm than good….”

  “That all depends, Mr. Lujack.”

  “On what?”

  “On what we find out about Frank Hanauer’s death. But by then it might not matter. By then Pendarves may have already turned you in.”

  Out front, Ms. Melendez stopped doing nothing much long enough to provide Rafael Vega’s home address. That was all she gave us; no smile, no good-bye. None of the other office staff did any smiling, either. Working at Containers, Inc., was a bundle of fun, all right.

  On the way through the misty rain to the car, Eberhardt said, “Coleman’s some piece of work.”

  “Yeah. He grows on you-like mold.”

  “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Could be he wasn’t as chummy with Hanauer as he’d like us to think. Could be he had a reason to want Hanauer dead.”

  “It’s buried deep, if so.”

  Eberhardt grunted. “Kind of a bust, talking to him. But at least we know Thomas is all right.”

  “Not necessarily in the clear, though. Family alibis aren’t worth a damn. Let’s see if Glickman’s made contact with him yet.”

  We got into the car. While I was punching out Glickman’s number on the mobile phone, Eb said thoughtfully, “Funny that both Pendarves and Rafael Vega didn’t show up for work today. Might be a coincidence, like Coleman said. Might also be some connection between those two, huh?”

  “We’ll go over to the Mission and ask Vega. Or one of us will if Glickman and Thomas are ready to talk.”

  They were, it turned out. Eb and I tossed a coin to see which of us would go where. He got the Mission, I got Glickman’s office downtown.

  * * * *

  Chapter 5

  Back in the Barbary Coast days, before and for a while after the 1906 quake, the block of Pacific Avenue between Kearny and Montgomery was known as Terrific Street. There were twenty-four saloons and dance halls in that one block, among them the Criterion, the So-Different, the Golden City, and Spider Kelly’s notorious watering hole on the first floor of the Seattle Hotel. On Terrific Street in those days you could buy just about anything in the way of sinful pleasure, from opium dreams to “specialty” prostitutes from the four corners of the globe.

  The saloons and dance halls are generations gone, victims of the Red Light Abatement Act of 1914, but most of the original squat brick buildings are still standing today-survivors of the ‘89 quake as well. Their outward appearance hasn’t changed much since the post-1906 reconstruction. Despite the cars in the street and the high rises towering on all sides, you can almost feel their history-a sense of what it must have been like on the Barbary Coast a century ago.

  Nowadays, the Terrific Street buildings house offices, many of which are vacant. There is an overabundance of downtown office space, particularly in the modern Financial District to the immediate north, and as a result the owners of these venerables have been reluctant to make improvements or lease concessions demanded by current and prospective tenants. Some of the owners were being forced into making repairs because of structural weakening after the recent quake; but the buildings’ age and brick construction still make them undesirable now that everyone’s earthquake consciousness has been raised. If it weren’t for the fact that they’re a part of the Jackson Square Historic District, they might have been sold long ago and razed in favor of high rises. One of the country’s most flamboyant criminal attorneys, Melvin Belli, still has his offices in one of them and makes a practice of sitting in his window and sneering at tourists who come to gawk. Less well known, if no less competent, attorneys- criminal and otherwise-also have their offices on Terrific Street. Paul Glickman is one of them.

  I entered his building, across the street and down the block from Belli’s, at three twenty. Glickman and his partner, Elston Crandall, occupied the entire second floor. Their reception room was far more sedate than Belli’s, which I had had occasion to visit once; in fact, about the only thing they had in common were high ceilings, windows facing Pacific, and outside window boxes full of flowers. I gave my name to the male receptionist and was shown into Glickman’s private sanctum right away.

  He was alone when I entered, seated behind a broad walnut desk that faced his own row of windows overlooking Terrific Street. Thomas Lujack wasn’t due until a quarter of four. I’d wanted a few minutes alone with Glickman first; he had had a client with him when I called from Containers, Inc., and we had spoken just briefly. He stood to shake my hand, then waved me to a chair upholstered in tan cloth. Tan and walnut-brown were the dominant colors here-all very tasteful and dignified, so as to inspire confidence in his clients, no doubt. He inspired confidence too: in his early fifties, trim, with salt-and-pepper hair, calm eyes that looked at you steadily from beneath bushy brows, and a quiet take-charge manner. If I ever had the misfortune to find myself charged with a felony, he was the man I would want to defend me.

  He had a habit of steepling his fingers when he talked from a seated position; he did that now. Without preamble he said, “It appears Nick Pendarves was in error last night. Mr. Lujack claims he was at his brother’s home in Burlingame until nine o’clock.”

  “Coleman confirms it,” I said. “Eberhardt and I talked to him an hour ago.”

  “So. If Pendarves was wrong once in making a ‘positive’ identification, he could just as easily be wrong twice.”

  “It’s a nice legal point, anyway.”

  “Mmm. It almost makes me wish Pendarves had filed a police report. Which he hasn’t yet, or I would have heard about it.”

  “You don’t really want it in the public record, do you?”

  “Only if it can be proven beyond a doubt that there wasn’t a deliberate attempt on Pendarves’s life. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Lujack would hire someone to run down Pendarves with a car, but a jury might not. Juries are unpredictable, especially in a homicide trial.”

  “I don’t see any way of proving it now,” I said.

  “No, neither do I.”

  “I take it Pendarves hasn’t tried to contact Thomas since last night?”

  “No.”

  “With any luck, he won’t. What was Thomas’s reaction when you told him about the incident?”

  “Shock, dismay, anger. He sounded genuinely upset.”r />
  “He won’t do anything rash, will he?”

  “I warned him against it.”

  “Then Pendarves is the only one we have to worry about. He may just let the whole thing slide, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it.”

  “Would it do any good for you to talk to him?”

  “I doubt it. But I’ll give it a try tonight.” I glanced at my watch; it was twenty of four. “There’s something you should know before Thomas gets here,” I said, “something Eberhardt found out today from a coworker of Pendarves’s named Antonio Rivas. I don’t know that it has anything to do with Frank Hanauer’s murder, but it’s a possibility.” I went on to tell him about the illegals situation at Containers, Inc.

  Glickman had one of those unreadable courtroom faces, an attribute that helped make him a good trial attorney, but I could tell from the clipped way he said “Mr. Lujack should have seen fit to tell us that himself” that he didn’t like the news any better than I did.

  “His brother claims they kept quiet because it couldn’t have any bearing on Hanauer’s murder. The real reason is they were afraid it would leak out to the INS.”

  “If it becomes a matter of public record now, it could have a prejudicial effect on our case.”

  “Unless it relates to the homicide in a way that proves Thomas innocent.”

  “Do you think it might?”

  “Too soon for me to say. How would you’ve handled the illegals thing if the Lujacks had owned up in the beginning?”

  “Advised them to turn themselves in immediately,” Glickman said. “And to issue a statement to the media that they were doing so voluntarily, as an act of contrition. The public approves of voluntary confessions of minor sins, if they’re done at the right time for the right reasons; it would have helped Thomas’s credibility. Going public at this late date would have the opposite effect, I’m afraid. The prosecution would see to it if the case does go to trial.”

  “So how do you handle it now?”

  “That depends. On what Mr. Lujack has to tell us, and whether or not you can establish a link between the illegals matter and the death of Frank Hanauer.”