Bleeders

13

The dead man in the refrigerated morgue locker had been badly used before he was murdered. Facial bruises, nose broken, upper lip split in two places. Beaten and then, at some point, shot in the back of the head. The body lay face up so the entrance wound wasn’t visible, but the ragged hole below the right eye was plainly an exit wound.

The two cops stood watching me from the other side of the sliding table. A study in contrasts, those two. Lieutenant John Fuentes was a little guy, stringy, in his early fifties, slow-moving and deliberate, wearing a perpetual half-smile that hid a suspicious mind and an abrasive personality. The mole on his cheek was the size of a garbanzo bean; I wondered irrelevently if there was much risk of it becoming cancerous. Inspector Harry Craddock, SFPD Homicide, was a broad-beamed black man pushing forty, eight inches taller than Fuentes, fidgety standing or sitting, serious-meined and dedicated to the point of obsession — your classic Type A. I’d had dealings with Craddock before and we’d always gotten along. Fuentes was another matter. It was obvious he’d taken a dislike to me, for whatever reason; every time he aimed a question or comment my way, the words seemed underscored with accusation and grated on me like sandpaper.

He said when I lifted my head, “Well?”

“Jay Cohalan.”

“Uh-huh. What we figured.”

“No ID on him?”

“Would I have called you if there was?”

“Why did you call me? Must be somebody else who could have ID’ed the body.”

“Why do you think?”

“I don’t know anything about this.”

“No?”

“No.”

Craddock said, “Let’s continue this upstairs.” He chafed his hands together, blew into them. “It’s too goddamn cold down here.”

He gestured to the coroner’s attendant, who slid what was left of Cohalan back into the locker, and the three of us went out to the elevators. Craddock’s office was in the main Hall of Justice building, second floor. On the way there we passed an alcove of vending machines; he stopped, saying, “I can use a cup of coffee.” Fuentes didn’t want anything. Neither did I.

“Christ, I hate going to the morgue.” Craddock again, when we were settled around his desk. Both his big hands were wrapped tight around the foam cup of hot coffee. “Chill down there goes right to your bones.”

“Didn’t seem cold to me,” Fuentes said.

Craddock tipped him a look. “Maybe your blood’s thicker than mine.”

“Maybe it is. You know how hot-blooded us Latinos are.” Craddock didn’t bite on that, and the false half-smile swung my way. “So you don’t know anything about what happened to Cohalan?”

“That’s right. The last time I saw him or talked to him was Thursday night at Annette Byers’ apartment. How long has he been dead?”

“Coroner’s estimate is minimum of thirty-six hours,” Craddock answered.

Fuentes said, “Killed sometime Friday night, before or after the Carolyn Dain homicide and the attempt on you. Probably after.”

I had no comment on that.

“Who do you think killed him?”

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Shot execution style the same as Ms. Dain.” The same as me. Click. Click. “If the slug was recovered, Ballistics’ll prove it came from the same gun.”

“We’ve got it,” Craddock said. “It was inside the trunk of the car. Looks like Cohalan was stuffed in there alive and then shot.”

“Where was the car?”

“Out near Candlestick. Security patrol spotted it and called us. Trunk lid was up — somebody’d jimmied it open, neighborhood kids or adults, and then run like hell when they saw what was inside.”

“Any sign of Byers?”

“No. Nothing in the car but the corpse.”

“Prints?”

“Wiped clean.”

“Whose car?”

“Registered to Cohalan. Three-year-old Camry.”

Why did Baldy take his wallet, then? I wondered. Confuse the issue, possibly, make it look like a robbery homicide. He might’ve wanted Cohalan’s credit cards, too. Baldy was a greed-driven psycho, and not very smart; a walletful of credit cards could be an irresistable temptation to a man like that.

Fuentes asked me, with that suspicious edge in his voice, “You know Annette Byers — where does she fit into this?”

“I don’t know her. I’ve only spoken to her the one time.”

“Accessory or victim?”

“Could be either one.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Look, Lieutenant, I don’t know any more about this than you do. Why pick on me?”

“Make a guess about Byers.”

“What good is guesswork?”

“Make a guess,” he said.

I held onto my temper. “Okay, a guess. Accessory. Mixed up with the bald man in some way.”

“Lovers?”

“Maybe.”

“She was screwing Cohalan, wasn’t she?”

“Evidently.”

“Well?”

“What do you want me to say? That maybe she was working with Baldy all along, just using Cohalan to get hold of the seventy-five thousand? That he found out the truth and squawked, and that’s why he was murdered? It could’ve happened that way. But it’s just one possible scenario.”

“And you can’t identify the bald man.”

“If I could, I’d’ve done it Friday night.”

“No idea where he and the woman might be?”

“Same answer.”

“You wouldn’t be having notions, would you?”

“Meaning what?”

“You know what. The personal, payback kind.”

Too close to home. The smart thing for me to do would be to give him and Craddock everything I’d come up with so far — Steve Niall, Charlie Bright, Jackie Spoons, the Dingo message, the plastic “Remember the Alamo!” chip. But I’d known coming in here that I was not likely to play it smart, and nothing I’d seen or heard had changed my mind. I didn’t like Fuentes or his attitude any more than he cared for me or mine, and besides, all I really had were possibilities and conjecture — no direct link to Baldy or Byers or the missing money or the two murders. Withholding evidence is a criminal act; withholding prospective knowledge is a nonactionable sin of omission.

I said, “You’re way off base, Lieutenant.”

“I’d better be.”

“I’ve cooperated so far — I’ll continue to cooperate. The only thing you should know that I haven’t already told you is that there’s a probable drug connection in all this.”

That bent his smile out of shape. “What kind of drug connection?”

“Cohalan was a crankhead; so is Byers. They were stoned before and after I took the money away from them Thursday night. I figure Baldy’s cut from the same cloth — user, supplier, or both.”

“I didn’t see anything in your case file about drugs.”

“It wasn’t germane to the job I was hired to do. Carolyn Dain knew her husband was using, but she didn’t tell me about it up front. I found out in the course of my investigation.”

“Why didn’t you report this to me before now?”

“I would have if I’d been thinking clearly. Almost getting killed has a way of making you forgetful, among other things.”

“Damn straight,” Craddock said. “Ease up on him, John. He’s as much a victim here as the two morgue cases.”

“That doesn’t earn him any special favors.”

“He’s cooperating, isn’t he? Like he said?” There was an edge in Craddock’s tone. Fuentes’ suspicious nature was wearing thin on him, too. “Cut him some slack.”

“You know him better than I do,” Fuentes said, and got to his feet. He glanced at Craddock, then fixed his gaze on me. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Count on it. See you, Harry.”

Craddock gestured but didn’t answer. When Fuentes was gone, he took his time lighting one of the plastic-mouthpiece cigarillos he favored. The no-smoking-in-public-places law didn’t seem to be in force here in the bosom of the law, any more than it was in O’Key’s saloon.

He said through a gout of smoke, “Fuentes doesn’t seem to like you much.”

“I noticed.”

“By-the-book type. Ex-military. Keeps his ass clenched so tight he could crack nuts between his cheeks.”

“He has no cause to want to crack mine.”

“What I figured. Cooperating, like you said.”

“Like I said. Haven’t I always?”

“With me you have. So if you turned up some definite information on the Cohalan homicide, just happened to stumble across it, say, you’d let me know.”

“Before I even thought about contacting Fuentes.”

Craddock grinned a little. He understood what was going on with me, all right. He had qualities of empathy, humanity, insight that had been short-supplied to the good lieutenant. “I asked him for a copy of your Cohalan file. Said he’d get me one, but I got a feeling he’ll make me wait for it.”

“I can give you the gist of it right now. And put a copy in your hands first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow’s soon enough. I got plenty of other open cases to keep me busy today.” Craddock picked up his cup, sipped from it, pulled a face that said the coffee had gotten cold. He frowned at the cup, frowned at his cigarillo. “I hate working Sundays,” he said.

“Everybody does. Not much choice, sometimes.”

“Yeah. Well, suppose you slide on outta here, and we’ll both get on with it.”

A different guy was manning the counter at Veterans’ Gym — musclebound, tight-mouthed, and bored. When I asked if Zeke Mayjack was around, he jerked a thumb toward the main gym entrance without even looking at me. I said, “Okay to go in?” and he scowled and jerked the thumb again. The owners of the Veterans’ seemed to have a knack for hiring the personality challenged.

Late Sunday morning appeared to be a slow time here. Of the seven people I counted in the gym, only three were getting exercise — a grunting welterweight giving the big bag a workout and two light-heavies in headgear and sweats thumping each other in the ring. A tired-looking fat man leaned against the ropes in one corner, issuing instructions in a monotone that the sluggers paid no attention to. A pair of hard-eyed characters was hanging close outside the ring, giving more heed to each other than to the sparring partners. Beyond where they stood, a grizzled old man sat on a three-legged stool, yelling sporadic advice to one of the sluggers who also ignored him. His raised voice and the smack of leather against flesh had an echolike effect in the cavernous enclosure.

I made a guess and approached the hard-eyed pair. Wrong guess. One of them said, “Mayjack? That’s him on the stool over there.”

Zeke Mayjack was not what I’d expected in more ways than one. Mid-seventies, sparse white hair like a curly skullcap, of indeterminate race: he might have been white, or mixed blood, or a fair-skinned African American. Probably a light-heavy in his days, like the pair in the ring, and not a very good one judging from his bent, flattened, lumpy features. One eye had gone milky with cataracts — blind, or close to it. The other had the shiny stare common to scramble-brained ex-pugs who’ve taken too many hard blows above the neck.

“Keep your head down, baby,” he was hollering as I walked up. “Down, man, down, goddamn it.”

“Zeke Mayjack, right?” I said. “Talk to you for a minute?”

The one good eye shifted my way, slid over the marks on my face. A cackling sound that had a hitch and a hiss in it came out of him. “Man, you shoulda kept your head down, too. Cut you up if you don’t.”

I let that pass and told him my name. That was as far as I got.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I been waiting on you. He says he don’t want to see you, he don’t have nothing to say to you.”

“Who doesn’t want to see me?”

“Hey, who else? Jackie.”

“Jackie Spoons?”

“You know some other Jackie, honey boy?”

“How’d he know I want to talk to him?”

“He knows. Yeah, he knows everything,” The cackle again. “He’s like Sanny Claus.”

Sanny Claus. Christ. “Why won’t he talk to me?”

“Jackie, he says tell you you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. He says he don’t know a fuckin’ thing about it.”

“About what?”

Shrug.

“Jay Cohalan? Carolyn Dain?”

Shrug. The one good eye wandered ringward. “Get that left up, for cry sake. C’mon, Frankie, you punk, jab. Yeah, that’s the way. Jab, jab, head down, jab.”

“What else did Jackie say?”

“Huh?”

“What else did he say to tell me?”

“Oh, yeah. Don’t hassle him if you know what’s good for you. Stay away from him if you know what’s good for you. Better do what he says. Cut you up a lot worse if you get Jackie pissed off. Lot worse, man,”

“Is that all?”

“All?”

“His message. That all of it?”

“Yeah.” The good eye blinked; the blind one stared glassily from under a lid enlarged by scar tissue. “No, it ain’t. Jackie says go talk to that fuckin’ Aussie.”

“What Aussie?”

Shrug.

“Dingo? That who he meant?”

“Yeah, him. Jackie don’t like him, honey boy.”

“Why doesn’t Jackie like him?”

Shrug.

“He do something to Jackie?”

“Nah. Nobody does nothing to Jackie.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Who? Jackie?”

“Dingo. The Aussie.”

“Yeah, what about him?”

“What does he look like? Big, bald, bushy eyebrows?”

“I don’t know him, baby,” Mayjack said.

“You mean you’ve never seen him?”

“Nah. He don’t come around here.”

“What’s his real name? Dingo’s real name?”

Shrug.

“I can’t go talk to him if I don’t know where to find him. Come on, Zeke, you must have some idea—”

“Hey, hey, man, my friends call me Zeke and you ain’t my friend. I don’t know you. You call me Mr. Mayjack.”

“Where do I look for Dingo, Mr. Mayjack?”

Shrug. Then, explosively, “Goddamn it! Shit!” as a flurry of loud smacks came from the ring, and one of the light-heavies bounced on the canvas. “I told you head down, left up, up. Smart-ass young punk, why don’t you listen?”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Dingo, Mr. Mayjack.”

“Jackie don’t like that fuckin’ Aussie. That’s what he said. I don’t like that fuckin’ Aussie, Zeke, he said.”

“They in the same business? Is that why Jackie doesn’t like him?”

Mayjack’s face clouded; his mouth pinched in at the corners. “Don’t ask me about that, honey boy. Boxing’s my business. Yeah. Jackie’s business is his business.”

“Where can I find Dingo?”

Shrug.

“What’s Dingo’s real name?”

“Pussy!” Mayjack yelled at the ring, where the one slugger was still down, and the fat man was now bending over him. “Get up, Frankie. Get him up, honey boy, get that pussy on his feet.”

Hopeless. I could stand here and hammer the same questions for an hour and I’d get nothing more out of Mayjack’s scrambled head than what he’d been programmed to deliver.

At that I could count myself lucky. Jackie Spoons didn’t consider me a threat; if he had he’d have sent a hardcase or two to deliver the message, with fists and weapons to back it up. Or brought it to me in person. The fact that he’d given the job to a punchdrunk old man was a show of contempt for me and my troubles.

Well, I could live with that — for now. The puzzler was why he’d thrown me Dingo. What was the connection between the two of them, the reason for Jackie Spoons’ dislike of the Aussie? And the main question: Was Dingo the bald man? I didn’t remember any sort of accent, but Baldy had spoken only a few words, and I’d been under enormous tension; and an Australian might have been in this country long enough to have Americanized his speech. Dingo could be the bald man, all right. Or a link to him. Or nothing more than just another bottom-feeding pawn.

In the car I tried calling Tamara; the line hummed and buzzed emptily. I accessed the office answering machine and listened to three different voices, none of them hers or Nick Kinsella’s. No calls, no messages: no news.

Working Sunday for me but not for most other people. Joe DeFalco wasn’t home, either.

I couldn’t think of anybody else to call, anyplace to go, anybody to see. Tomorrow, yes, but tomorrow was a long way off. I drove around for a while, aimlessly; all it did was give me too much down time to spin my thoughts and listen to the clicks. So I went home to Kerry and Emily and took them to the Palace of Fine Arts and then the aquarium and then to North Beach for an Italian dinner. Keeping them close, surrounding our little unit with strangers — getting through the rest of the day.

But none of it was much good. Nothing was going to be much good until I found Baldy. Only then would I be able to start living again.