Breakdown nd-18

by Bill Pronzini

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Why? We don’t have anything to discuss. If we had I would have seen you earlier.”

  “There are some questions I want to ask you.”

  “What questions?”

  “Why don’t we go inside? Or sit in your car where it’s dry?”

  “No,” he said, “I can’t take the time. I have an appointment.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  He hesitated, as if weighing the idea, then shook his head and bent to unlock the driver’s door.

  “Rafael Vega,” I said. “Illegal aliens. Coyotes.”

  His reaction was like watching a piece of badly edited film: freeze frame for three or four seconds, followed by jerky action in which he finished the unlocking process and yanked the door open. He said without looking at me, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay. Try this: Nick Pendarves didn’t kill your brother.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Is it, Mr. Lujack?”

  I thought for a second that he was going to dive into the car to avoid both me and the issues I’d just raised; but he didn’t do it. He straightened slowly, faced me again. The greenish effect of the nearest arc light gave his skin an unhealthy cast.

  He said, “Of course Pendarves is guilty. All the evidence-”

  “Evidence can be faked.”

  “You have proof that it was?”

  “Not yet. But I’m working on it.”

  “On whose authority?”

  I didn’t answer that.

  “I see,” he said. “So I suppose you expect me to pay you.”

  I didn’t answer that either.

  “How long will it take? Another month or two-or six? And at what, two or three hundred dollars a day?”

  I had my hands in my overcoat pockets and I kept them there so I wouldn’t be tempted to hit him. I hurt him with my eyes, though; I must have because he winced and fastened his own gaze on my mouth.

  “Why are you afraid of the truth, Mr. Lujack?”

  “I’m not afraid of the truth. I know the truth.”

  “Do you? All right, who killed Frank Hanauer? Your brother?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, Pendarves didn’t do it. So who did?”

  “I doubt if we’ll ever know, now.”

  “Because Thomas is dead? That doesn’t necessarily follow. Don’t you want his name cleared?”

  “If possible, yes. But you haven’t been able to do it in a month and neither have the police.”

  “I still can, if you cooperate.”

  “I’ve given you all the cooperation I’m going to.”

  “It wouldn’t be the INS you’re worried about, would it?”

  “Damn the INS,” he said. “All I’m worried about is my sanity. I’ve taken all the grief and anguish I can stand; so has Tom’s widow. As far as we’re concerned, it’s over now, finished. Let the dead alone and the living go on living.”

  Nice little kiss-off speech-emotional, forceful, sincere. I didn’t buy a word of it. But there was nothing I could do about it. I just stood there while he folded himself into the front seat, looked up at me long enough to say, “Please don’t bother me or Eileen again. If you do …” Then he slammed the door, as if to emphasize the implied threat. I heard the lock click an instant before he ground the starter.

  I backed off a couple of steps, holding my anger in check, as he drove off. He thought he’d handled me just right. He thought this was the end of my nosing around in his and his brother’s private affairs. He thought that whatever he was hiding was going to stay hidden.

  He thought wrong.

  * * * *

  According to my map, Atlanta Street was in a narrow little section of Daly City flanked by the western slopes of the San Bruno Mountains, Colma’s Olivet Memorial Park and Serbian Cemetery, and the Cypress Hills Golf Course. For some reason known only to its developers, there being no body of water within miles, most of the streets had been given nautical-type names: Harbor, Dockside, Windjammer, Frigate, Pirate Cove. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the section resembled a short peninsula jutting out from the Daly City mainland. More likely, the names had nothing to do with anything except fledgling cleverness. Just another variety of cute kitsch, after the fashion of the gnomes in Eileen Lujack’s gardens.

  As the crow flies, only a few miles separated Teresa Melendez’s home from Containers, Inc. But the crow would have had to fly straight up over the San Brunos, just as I had to drive up over them on Guadalupe Canyon Parkway, and that increased the distance considerably. Guadalupe Canyon was where the end of the notorious car chase in Bullitt was filmed-the one that inspired the endless, mindless succession of TV-show car chases and cinematic demolition derbies that continue to offend the senses. But that was more than twenty years ago, before the road underwent improvements and its daily traffic load was still light. Nowadays they couldn’t have closed it off for a couple of days as they did back then; it had become a well-traveled commuter thoroughfare and the animals in the rush-hour zoo would have rioted at the inconvenience.

  I turned off Guadalupe onto Orange Street, made a wrong turn, and discovered that most of the little peninsula-the part with the nautical street names-was hidden away behind a high rustic retaining wall that extended east-west for several blocks. The only through street had a guardhouse and guard at the entrance, and when I passed by I could see acres of trailers on landscaped lots. So the landlocked peninsula was mostly a fancy trailer park bounded by brown hillsides and a couple of cemeteries and made up of streets called Frigate and Pirate Cove. I didn’t even try to figure it out. There are some things that defy deductive reasoning.

  I found Atlanta Street finally; it dead-ended at the street along which the retaining wall ran. Ninety-eight percent of the residences in this part were the standard Daly City variety dubbed “little boxes” by Malvina Reynolds-squarish row houses standing shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors, built close to the sidewalk, garage below and living quarters above, narrow entranceways between with staircases leading up to the front doors. The other two percent, scattered here and there, were newish detached houses and older cottage-style dwellings that looked uncomfortably out of place, like liberals that had wandered by mistake into a stadium full of right-wing fundamentalists. Eight-oh-six Atlanta turned out to be one of the cottages, small and white-frame and not too well kept up, with a little front garden behind a low fence and a carport instead of a garage on one side. Lights burned behind drawn curtains, and there was one vehicle parked under the carport, so somebody was home.

  The parked car was a brownish compact. I couldn’t make out the license plate as I drove past, but I was pretty sure the make was Honda and the model Civic. The curb in front was empty; so were the curb spaces before another cottage on one flank and row houses on the other. An empty white van waited at an angle across the way; it was the only street-parked vehicle in the immediate vicinity.

  I circled the next block and came back on Atlanta. No sign of Rafael Vega’s Buick anywhere along there. I tried the cross streets, taking it slow. That didn’t buy me anything either.

  So maybe I was wrong about Vega and Teresa Melendez.

  And maybe I was right and he was out buying groceries or liquor or condoms, or doing any one of a hundred other things.

  I drove over to Mission and stopped at the first restaurant I saw, a Mexican place that specialized in Yucatan dishes. I ate a burrito with prawns and mushrooms and cilantro; I drank three cups of coffee; I sat and thought about things and didn’t have any brainstorms. At eight o’clock I put myself back in the car and returned to Atlanta Street.

  The lights were still on in Teresa Melendez’s cottage. The Honda Civic was still parked under the carport. And there still wasn’t any sign of Rafael Vega or his Buick Skylark.

  Behind the parked van was curb room for another car, as well as some shadow from an overhanging pepper tree. I thought I could sit there for
a while without attracting attention. I made a U-turn, parked, drifted low on the seat, and waited.

  Seconds crawled and minutes crept, the way they had in the parking lot at Containers, Inc., the way they always do on a stakeout. God, how I hated stakeouts-short or long, it didn’t make any difference. The passive waiting, the boredom, the slow, slow passage of dead time. How many did this make in the past thirty-odd years? How many empty, wasted, lost hours? Too damn many. The physical discomfort was also becoming less tolerable, especially on nights like this, with the rain stopping and starting, stopping and starting, and the wind and the cold sneaking into the car and conspiring to numb my feet. Nights like this, I felt every one of my years. Nights like this, I understood why old men wrap themselves in sweaters and shawls and then sit close to heaters, stoves, blazing fires.

  Nine o’clock. Nothing happened at 806, except that the light in the front window went out. But there was still a light on at the rear; I could see the faint glow of it against the wet dark.

  If he was out somewhere and coming back, I thought, wouldn’t she put the front porch light on for him? No, hell, not necessarily … not if he was going to park under the carport too and go in through the rear door. For all I knew, that glow over there was theback porch light.

  Nine thirty. And that was all I could take-of the cold, of the waiting, of the boredom. Besides, the later it got and the longer I sat here, the shorter the odds that somebody would notice me and call the cops. I wasn’t even sure why I’d sat here this long, put myself through the discomfort. If Vega was shacking up with Teresa Melendez, what did it matter if I braced him tomorrow instead of tonight? I’d put almost a month into this investigation; another few hours hardly mattered much.

  I wondered if I was becoming an obsessive-compulsive where my work was concerned. I’d always had that tendency, always been able to control it before it got out of hand. But now? The earthquake had something to do with intensifying it, but mostly the cause was those three desperate months in the mountain cabin. Another little legacy of change. And something else for me to worry about in my spare time.

  * * * *

  I made myself go home, instead of out to Taraval and the Hideaway. It would have been after ten by the time I got there, and some of the regulars would already have left. If I was ever going to find out anything from them, which at this point seemed unlikely, it wouldn’t be tonight.

  There was one message waiting for me. From Eileen Lujack. She said she’d decided to call me because she was going to spend the evening with a friend. She said my home number was on the business card I’d given her, as if she were telling me something I didn’t know. She said, “I thought about what you said today and I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to keep investigating. I really don’t. I think the best thing for everybody is if we just let the dead alone and the living go on living.”

  Coleman Lujack’s phrase, word for word.

  * * * *

  Chapter 13

  The San Francisco branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service is downtown on Sansome, in the U.S. Customs complex. I got there at nine thirty on Friday morning, found the office open for business, and talked my way into an audience with a deputy district director named Clement Orloff.

  Orloff was young, officious, conservative in attitude and appearance, and a hard-line INS loyalist. He didn’t want to tell me anything until I told him exactly what I was working on, complete with names and addresses. I said I wasn’t there to turn anybody in; I said I needed more time and information before I could make any direct accusations; I said I wasn’t trying to hide anything or I wouldn’t have come to see him in the first place, would I? We argued a little, and I stonewalled him, and finally his zealousness got the better of him and he agreed to answer my questions. But I’ll be damned if he didn’t insist on taping the conversation.

  “Tell me about the coyotes,” I said.

  “Smugglers,” Orloff said promptly. “Also known as ‘travel agents.’ Scum, as far as we’re concerned. They prey on their own kind.”

  “Smuggle illegals across the border, is that it?”

  “No. To U.S. points after the illegals have found their way across.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “For a fee, the coyotes arrange and provide transportation from border areas to cities up north-areas where other illegals congregate and where they can find work.”

  “The coyotes operate down around San Diego, then?”

  “Thick as flies,” Orloff said. “The illegals need them to get past the San Onofre checkpoint.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The last Border Patrol checkpoint, on Highway Five sixty-seven miles from the border-our last defense against illegal immigration into Southern California. If an illegal gets safely past San Onofre, there’s not much to stop him from reaching the L.A. area and then migrating elsewhere.”

  “Are the coyotes organized?”

  “Some are, some aren’t.”

  “But there are large rings?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Big money in that type of smuggling, right?”

  “Lord, yes. Illegals come over the border in droves. We caught well over a million last year, and that is no more than twenty-five percent of the estimated total influx. Most of the ones that are caught and sent back try again until they make it.”

  “Looking for the promised land,” I said.

  “Mmm. Of course, IRCA has been a major deterrent. Otherwise the situation would be much worse.”

  “IRCA. That’s the immigration reform law passed a few years ago?”

  “Yes. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of ‘Eighty-Six. It provides amnesty for qualified families, and penalizes employers for hiring illegals and requires them to file documents verifying that their foreign workers are authorized to be in this country. An excellent program.”

  “Seems to me I’ve heard rumblings that it isn’t working as well as expected.”

  “Of course it’s working,” Orloff said defensively. “More than four million illegals have achieved amnesty so far. But that’s not enough for La Raza Centra Legal and the other liberal groups.”

  “What’s their position?”

  “Oh, that IRCA hasn’t eliminated the basic economic incentive for immigrants to come here, and that it hasn’t really slowed the influx of illegals because a lot of the amnesty people are providing an established network to bring in impoverished friends and relatives. They want all sorts of additional reforms.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “Doesn’t it, though.”

  I was not about to argue the point with him; trying to argue with a loyal bureaucrat is a job for other zealots and masochists. I said, “Let’s get back to the coyotes. How do they operate?”

  “Well, the organized rings have brokers who work both sides of the border. Mexicans with valid U.S. visas that allow them to travel back and forth undisturbed. On U.S. soil they congregate where the illegals do after crossing. In San Ysidro, for instance, there’s a supermarket ten blocks from the border that is a coyote hotbed.”

  “If you know about these places, why can’t you shut them down?”

  “We try, God knows. Agents from Brown Field-that’s the main Border Patrol station down there-raid them periodically. And undercover agents from our antismuggling unit do what they can to infiltrate the gangs. But there are too many illegals, too many coyotes, and too few of our people., .” He made a frustrated gesture.

  I asked, “What happens once the deals are set and money changes hands?”

  “The illegals are loaded into cabs and driven to safe areas,” Orloff said. “Then they’re transferred to private vehicles-trucks of different sizes, passenger cars. The coyotes pack them in like sardines for the runs north. Illegals have been found under the hood and crammed into the trunk, sucking on hoses for air. More than a few have died en route.”

  Christ. “What’s the going rate per person?”
<
br />   “Depends on the final destination. Seventy-five dollars to Santa Ana, one hundred dollars to L.A. Some of the freelance coyotes charge more. They’re even worse scum; they’ve been known to abandon passengers after being paid.”

  “The organized rings need financing to get started, don’t they? So they can hire brokers and drivers, buy vehicles if needed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where does the money come from? Strictly from Mexican interests, or are there Anglos who play dark angels?”

  “There are Anglos,” Orloff said. Not without reluctance, as if he didn’t like to admit that some of his own countrymen could also be scum. “Is that the reason you’re here? You know someone, an Anglo, who might be involved with the coyotes?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. As I told you, I’m not sure of my facts just yet.”

  “If you have knowledge of felony activity involving the federal government, it’s your duty-”

  “Let’s not start that again, Mr. Orloff. I know my duty- to the federal government, and to my profession, my clients, and myself. When there’s anything definite to report, I’ll report it. You have my word on that.”

  “I hope your word is your bond,” he said sententiously, and made a little production of switching off his tape recorder.

  We both got on our feet. He didn’t offer to shake hands before I went out; neither did I. Each of us had our reason. He didn’t want to touch a private detective of questionable moral fiber and possible liberal cant. I didn’t want to touch an asshole.

  * * * *

  The sky had quit its copious leaking during the night, and this new day wasn’t as gray or damp as the past several had been. There were patches of blue here and there in the overcast, through which a pale winter sun kept trying to shine. Hallelujah. The wind was still gusty and chill, but then you couldn’t expect too much sudden improvement in the weather at this time of year. I took advantage of the dry air and pale sun by walking over to the building where Bates and Carpenter had its offices, three blocks from the INS encampment. I thought that since I was in the neighborhood, I’d take a little of my time and a little of Kerry’s to see how she was bearing up.