Hard Fall

by Pascal Scott

“Motherfucker!” she screamed as the punch connected with her assailant.

  The biker’s head snapped back sharply with its ugly, yellow-toothed mouth open before it came forward again, splashing blood from its nostrils. His short-fingered gloved hand went to his face.

  “You broke my nose!” he howled. “You fuckin’ cunt!”

  Stone connected again with a quick left to his cheek. A blurred figure appeared behind him as Stone heard a bottle hit the dark knot of hair at the back of the biker’s head. The glass didn’t break. Instead, it made a pure, high, almost musical clink above the fracas. From the jukebox, Phil Collins was singing, “It’s just another day for you and me in paradise.”

  The biker floated down in slow motion onto his knees and fell forward on the gray linoleum. Stone’s eyes focused on the stubby hand holding the red-capped, clear pint, then followed the line of the arm to the white T-shirt with the Mabel’s Marauders logo, up to the shoulder and then to the face of the hitter. It was Dory, gloating over the fallen Angel, giving the biker a couple of booted kicks to the groin for good measure.

  “Asshole,” Dory sneered.

  Looking around, Stone saw that the other bikers had been driven from the bar. Tables were overturned along with chairs and drinks. Window glass sparkled on the floor near the front entrance. Susan was on the phone, talking to someone. The police? Probably not, probably Mabel, the owner.

  “Come on,” Dory said, dropping the vodka bottle and yanking Stone’s arm. “We gotta jam outta here.”

  Too late. Opening the door, they were met by an onslaught of San Francisco’s boys in blue.

  Chapter Twenty

  “My name is Barbara, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Barbara,” came the response from everyone except Stone.

  Stone sat in a cheap folding chair in the meeting room of the gay church in the Castro. She was back at Lez-B-Sober, the lesbian AA meeting held on Wednesday evenings, the group Stone inevitably returned to when she tried to sober up. This time, it wasn’t by choice. This time, it was court-ordered. After their arrest, Stone and Dory had been bailed out by Zoe, the first person both Dory and Stone thought to call.

  “Zoe Martinelli!” Dory had hollered as she and Stone were processed for release. “Long time, no see.”

  “Same old, same old, huh, Dory,” Zoe had said.

  Dory was standing in front of a barrel-chested guard who wore a black uniform and a sour expression. He was returning the items taken at lock-up: Dory’s fat wallet, keys, a chain necklace, some loose change, and four silver rings. The guard had emptied a second manila envelope onto the counter, revealing similar contents for Stone. There was just one ring for Stone—her Celtic commitment ring. Stone put it back on her finger while Dory and Zoe exchanged pleasantries, ironic considering the circumstances and their personal history, Stone thought. Stone had a suspicion they’d been through this before. After a few minutes of conversation, Zoe’s gaze had wandered over to Stone.

  “Not exactly what I had in mind when I said you need rest,” she said.

  “Yeah, well,” Stone had replied.

  There was no excuse, and she knew better than to attempt one.

  Stone reconnected her attention with the present.

  “I look around this room tonight, and I see a lot of familiar faces,” Barbara was saying now. Barbara’s face, too wrinkled for middle age, looked familiar, too, although Stone couldn’t quite place it.

  “It’s not from seeing you here at AA meetings,” Barbara continued. “It’s from the bars.”

  An undercurrent of self-recognition rolled through the crowd in the form of subdued laughter. Of course, Stone thought. Probably seen her at Mabel’s.

  “Oh, yeah,” Barbara said, “the bars. That’s where we perfected this sickness we call alcoholism.”

  Stone felt her jaw tighten. She didn’t subscribe to the medical model of addiction. In her mind, getting drunk revealed a character flaw, not a medical condition. But she agreed with AA on one point. The only solution was to quit. Stone didn’t drink in moderation, and she never would. It was all or nothing. The nothing was the hard part. That was now, these last five days. And that took character.

  It had been five days and five nights and five meetings, just like The Big Book said. Three of those meetings had been open to everyone; one was for women only; and then there was the Wednesday night lesbian group, Lez-B-Sober. Stone had concluded that it was a matter of which devil you chose: the devil you knew or the devil you didn’t know. After five days of sobriety, she went with the devil she knew.

  “But we came to believe that a power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” Barbara was saying when Stone tuned back in.

  That was another thing. She was not insane. Alcoholism was not a medical condition, and it was not a mental illness. But Stone did agree that she needed help to keep herself from drinking. That much she admitted. At least until she got through this rough time after Emily’s death. Maybe when that was settled in her mind, when Stone knew what really happened, maybe then she could stop drinking on her own. In the meantime, it was this. The judge had given Stone a choice: jail or AA.

  Five more meetings to go.

  “And that’s why we carry this message to other alcoholics,” Barbara finished. “And why we follow the traditions and the steps.”

  Everyone stood to form a circle and clasp hands, their faces full of hope. Stone closed her eyes so as not to reveal her skepticism.

  “God…” Barbara began. A chorus of voices followed, chanting, “…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “A glass of Pinot Grigio,” Zoe ordered.

  “And a cup of coffee for me,” Stone added. “Black.”

  After the waitress had gone, Zoe put her elbows on the polished wood of the Café Flore table, resting her chin on her cupped hands.

  “Still on the wagon, huh, Stone? Glad to see it.”

  “Payin’ my dues,” Stone replied. “And thank you, by the way. I don’t think I ever said a proper thank you for bailing me out from my, uh…”

  “Drunken brawl?”

  “Yeah, something like that. Believe it or not, that’s the first time I’ve ever been in legal trouble. Certainly the first time I’ve been in jail. I’ve never even had a parking ticket.”

  “I don’t doubt that. You seem like an upstanding citizen to me,” Zoe said with a smile that suggested she was teasing Stone.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t really want to talk about me as much as I want to hear about you and what you found out.”

  The waitress delivered their drinks. Zoe tasted her wine and smiled. Stone sipped her coffee, which was too hot. She sipped it anyway. She needed something. Caffeine was a poor substitute for alcohol, but it would have to do. Zoe reached into her handbag and brought out her notepad.

  “On Wednesday, February 7, I interviewed Ms. Yu Yan Li at the Kitty Club. Ms. Li goes by the stage name Raven.”

  Zoe glanced up from her pad. Stone shook her head to indicate she’d never heard the name before.

  “Ms. Li informed me that she, Emily, and another dancer by the stage name Stella walked out of the club at closing. This was happening on the evening of Thursday, October 12, last year. The women parted company on the street. Ms. Li and Stella walked south on Broadway. Emily walked north alone. That was the last time they saw her.”

  Stone nodded.

  “Ms. Li informed me that she had been harassed by a customer named John Adams. Mr. Adams had in fact been banned from the club by a restraining order taken out by the club’s owner, May Cooper. On Thursday, February 8, I interviewed Mr. Adams at his apartment in the financial district.”

  “And?”

  “And Mr. Adams was cooperative, although I still considered him a suspect until I confirmed his alibi with the owner of Eddie Rickenbacker’s. That’s the bar where Mr. Adams was drinking on the night of Emily’s disappearance. Mr. Adams is obnoxious, bu
t I don’t think he’s our guy.

  “Then on Friday, February 9, I interviewed the owner of the Kitty Club, May Cooper, and on Saturday, February 10, I talked to Johanna Bonn, ‘Stella.’ Some good background there, and I’m going to follow up on a lead concerning the Mafia.”

  “Really?” Stone said. “The Mafia?”

  “Really,” Zoe replied. “The Mafia.”

  ****

  Coppola Investigations had mug shots of May’s thugs in a manila folder with a red label that read, “Galli Family—San Francisco, CA.” Pulling the photos from the folder, Zoe saw that John “Chippy” Carelli was surprisingly handsome, with deep-set dark eyes beneath heavy black eyebrows, full lips, and wavy black hair, a lock of which had curled onto his forehead for his mug shot. His head was down in a bull-like pose, as if he were about to charge at the camera. A yellow Post-It noted that Carelli had done time for fencing stolen goods back in the 1970s.

  Giuseppe “Scarface” De Luca’s mug shot revealed the reason for his nickname. The left side of his face was etched with a row of horizontal scars. Another Post-It explained that the scars had been inflicted by the brother of a girl an eighteen-year-old Giuseppe had addressed with disrespect. Unfortunately for Giuseppe, the brother was also a hit man in the Cosa Nostra. Giuseppe was made to apologize at the edge of a knife.

  “Martinelli!” Rich Coppola called, standing in the doorway of his office.

  Zoe’s desk was in the middle of the front room along with several comfortable armchairs and some potted plants that Zoe had brought back to life.

  “My office. Now.”

  Zoe grabbed her steno pad and hurried inside. Rich was a big man with a gangster’s face and a wrestler’s chest. But inside that chest beat the proverbial heart of gold. Rich lowered his bulk into the big executive chair behind the desk.

  “Something I should know about, Martinelli? What have you got yourself into this time?”

  “Nothing, boss.” Zoe seated herself in the guest chair across from Rich’s mahogany desk. “Just a little private snooping.”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times, you want to get your license and do it right, you’re hired.”

  “No, no, this suits me just fine. I like being your secretary.”

  “You’re not my secretary. You’re the office manager.”

  “Toe-may-toe. Tah-mah-toe,” Zoe said.

  “Does that mean you’re not going to tell me why you’re looking into the Galli family?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, for Chrissakes, don’t call me sir.”

  Rich picked up a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint from his desk and unwrapped a stick of gum, folding it into his mouth. He was trying to quit cigarettes, again.

  “What do you want to know?” he mumbled.

  He gave a few vigorous chews to soften the gum. Zoe opened her pad and readied her pen.

  “What’s their connection to North Beach?” she asked.

  “What isn’t their connection?” he retorted. “The Galli family got its claws into this city back in the 1920s. There were two crime families around here back then—the Gallis and the Ferragamos. That was the era of Prohibition, which happened, by the way, because men were away at war and women had been given the vote.”

  Zoe looked up from her pad in time to see Rich wink.

  “Until Prohibition ended—that would have been around 1933—the two families worked together in peace to supply the Bay Area with bootlegged booze. But when Prohibition was repealed after the boys came marching home and could vote again, the Gallis and the Ferragamos began a war of their own. And it was ugly. There was murder and mayhem on both sides until Francesco Galli cut the head off the snake. Luigi Ferragamo—the crime boss of the Ferragmo family—was shot to death by a Galli hit man as Luigi walked down Broadway in broad daylight, in the middle of the day.”

  “Gee,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, gee,” Rich repeated. “By the time the blood dried on the sidewalk, Francesco Galli had declared himself the new crime lord of San Francisco. He bought Fisherman’s Wharf with a business partner named Jimmy Giovanni and pulled himself up by his bloody bootstraps to become one of the city’s wealthiest residents. On the books, Francesco was a restaurateur. Off book, he had his dirty paws in the city’s sin businesses—prostitution, gambling, loan sharking, drugs, gay bars, and strip joints. Giovanni’s son Michael became mayor in the 1960s.”

  “Michael Giovanni,” Zoe repeated. “I heard he had mob ties.”

  “He always denied it, saying he wasn’t his father’s son. But he was. We all knew that.”

  “Did they own all the strip clubs in North Beach? The Galli family?” Zoe asked.

  “No, they didn’t own them; they extorted them. Francesco figured out pretty quick that it was more profitable to extort a percentage of the profits and let the owners deal with the property management headaches. Francesco sent his boys around once a month to collect the payment.”

  “I think I know the answer, but I’ll ask it anyway. What happened if a club owner didn’t want to pay?” Zoe asked.

  “No, no, that’s a good question, Martinelli. The way it worked was you got one chance. Pay up, or they’d bomb your business. That was the threat. Everybody paid up because the club owners knew the family was serious. And unstoppable, especially after Michael became mayor. And there were enough cops on the Galli payroll that legitimate business owners never knew who to trust in law enforcement. You pretty much had to knuckle under to the Gallis if you owned property in the red light district. You had to cooperate if you wanted to stay in business.”

  Zoe was starting to feel some sympathy for May Cooper.

  “And this is an even dumber question,” Zoe said. “How did the Gallis feel about the unions?”

  “Not a dumb question at all. I’m sure you know about the connection between the mob and the Teamsters.”

  “Jimmy Hoffa? ‘Sleeping with the fishes.’ Sure, everybody knows about that.”

  “And the Longshoremen.”

  “On the Waterfront. Marlon Brando,” Zoe said, a little too brightly, picturing Marlon in his white T-shirt, jeans, and leather jacket in The Wild One. The definitive bad boy. Why were bad boys so damn sexy? Especially when those bad boys were dykes.

  “Well, The Godfather if we’re talking movies… ” Rich was saying. Zoe brought her attention back to him.

  “What about the Service Employees International Union?” she asked.

  “Not SEIU. They’re clean.”

  Rich sat silently for a few minutes, letting Zoe’s mind work.

  Would unionization have put an end to extortion and the mob’s control of the Kitty Club? Probably not, but why risk it? There was no way the Galli family was going to let the Kitties organize without a fight. They had whacked people for less. Had Emily been whacked? But if she had, why had the mob let Johanna live? Johanna had been the main organizer, not Emily. With the backing of SEIU, the girls had won their battle. They had a union now to protect them. The mob could have killed Emily, but why would they? It didn’t make sense.

  “A word of advice, Martinelli?” Rich said, bringing Zoe back from her thoughts.

  “Yes, boss?”

  “This is a notch above your pay grade. Let me look into this for you.”

  “Thanks, boss. I’d appreciate that.”

  But all Rich came up with was nothing. There was no mob connection to Emily’s disappearance, as far as his sources knew. And after thirty-two billable hours of investigation, Zoe was no closer to learning what happened to Emily Bryson on the night of October 12, 1989, than she was four weeks ago when she started her quest.

  She had one last hand to play, and it was a wild card.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Stone! Yo, McStone!”

  Stone surveyed the garrulous crowd of lesbians before spotting Dory, already seated in a folding chair, waiting for the meeting to begin. Dory stood, rising up to all five-three of her stocky height—five-five in her Harley boots, s
he insisted. She looked like she had just arrived at the church. Her short brown hair stood straight up, and her face was still wind-flushed. Stone glanced at the helmet sitting like a black bowling ball beside Dory’s chair as Stone crossed the room.

  “Hey,” Stone said, by way of greeting.

  “Hey, girl,” Dory replied, glad-handing a slap to Stone’s back.

  They both sat.

  “So, how’s it goin’?” Dory began.

  “Okay,” Stone responded.

  “Me too. Been clean and sober seventeen days, four hours, and six minutes, not that I’m countin’. I tell you what, when I get my ten meetings, I’m turnin’ in my card to my case manager and never settin’ foot in an AA meeting again. Hand to God.”

  “I know what you mean,” Stone agreed. “A cold one sounds good right about now.”

  “Preach, sister Stone. If Mrs. Preston didn’t do random drug testing, I’d be drinkin’ at Mabel’s instead of sittin’ here with these losers.”

  Stone winced at the word. Dory noticed.

  “Present company excluded, of course,” she added quickly.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But ya never know when the long arm of the law is gonna make you piss in a cup.”

  “Truth.”

  “So, how’s it goin’ with Zoe? She helpin’ you figure out what happened to, uh, what was her name?”

  “Emily.”

  “Emily, yeah, sorry I forgot. To Emily. Is Zoe helpin’ ya?”

  “She is, yeah. Nothing firm yet, but we’re eliminating suspects.”

  “Suspects, huh. Does Zoe think there was foul play?”

  “We both do, yeah.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here,” Stone said, removing her wallet from the back pocket of her Dockers.

  She opened the insert and searched until she found a head shot of a smiling girl whose blond hair had been blown around her face from a walk on the beach.

  “This is Emily,” Stone said.

  Dory did a quick double take. It was subtle because she tried to catch herself before it happened, but Stone saw it. It wasn’t the kind of second look that you would give a beautiful woman—although Emily was certainly worth a second look. No, it was a look of recognition.