Bleeders

14

Ben Duryea had one of the more thankless jobs in law enforcement. For nearly a quarter of a century he’d been a parole agent for the California Department of Corrections. Parole agents are what they’re called now, to distinguish them from the county-hired probation officers, but oldtimers in or close to the system still refer to the breed as either parole officers or POs.

The thing about POs is that they work like dogs. Each has a caseload that is supposed to run around one hundred, but because of prison overcrowding and little enough funding to increase a too-low workforce of some eighteen hundred agents, most carried between a hundred-and-fifty and two hundred cases. Their job was to provide general supervision of criminal offenders and to help them adjust to life in the community after their release, which in fact meant arranging jobs, housing, medical care, counseling, education, social activities; traveling widely to interview clients, family members, acquaintances, employers; conducting searches, surveillance, and drug testing when necessary; and making arrests of parole violators, agents being required by law to carry firearms. For all of which duties they were paid between forty thousand and fifty thousand dollars annually, before taxes. The attrition rate was pretty high; only dedication, inertia, and decent civil service benefits kept it from being much higher.

I caught Duryea in his office at the Ferry Building early Monday morning — just barely. He was getting ready to leave on a three-day trip to the Salinas-Monterey area, where half a dozen of his clients were currently located. POs spend a lot of time away from their desks and on the road. I was fortunate to connect with him at all without an appointment.

“I can give you ten minutes,” he said. “What do you need?”

“A line on one of your people. He may have information connected to a case I’m working.”

“Something I should know about?”

“I can’t be sure until I talk to him.”

“You’ll let me know if there is?”

“Right away.”

“What’s his name?”

“Charlie Bright. Charles Andrew Bright.”

“Bright, Bright. I don’t... wait a minute.” He leaned over to flick on his computer, then tapped the keyboard and squinted at the screen through black-rimmed glasses. He looked tired, the kind of weariness that makes an intaglio of a man’s face. I had a dim memory of Duryea as a young PO with a fresh degree in criminology from Cal State Fullerton, lean and earnest and full of zeal. Now he was twenty pounds heavier, yet he still seemed almost gaunt; the lines in his forehead and cheeks were deep-cut, and his once prominent widow’s peak had thinned and receded at least three inches. It takes a toll, all right. His kind of work — and mine.

“Oh, yeah, Charles Andrew Bright.” Duryea took off his glasses briefly to rub his eyes. “There was a time,” he said ruefully, “when I prided myself on instant recall — all my clients’ names, addresses, phone numbers, personal data. Now I can barely remember to take a leak when I get up in the morning.”

“I hear you.”

“Bright’s low-priority, though. You know his history?”

“Some of it.”

“No problems since he was released. Regular reports. What do you want to know?”

“For starters, what he looks like. I’ve never seen him.”

“Skinny kid. Red hair, blue eyes, freckles.”

Scratch Charlie Bright. “What’s his current address?”

“Let’s see... rooming house in Oakland.”

“Employed where?”

“Warehouseman and driver for Eastside Meat Packers in Emeryville.”

He gave me both addresses, and I wrote them down. “How about relatives in the area?” I asked then.

“No relatives in California. One aunt in Texas, but she’s in a nursing home.”

“Other contacts?”

“Not as far as I know. He keeps pretty much to himself these days, or so he claims.”

I asked, “Any of these names in his files?” and ticked off Dingo, Jay Cohalan, and Jackie Spoons. Negative on each. If there was a connection between Bright and any of them, it was buried.

“Anything else?” Duryea said.

“Well, I can use a copy of Bright’s photo.”

“That’s against the rules.”

“I know it. But technically so is giving out verbal information to somebody not in the system. Just a small extension of the favor, Ben.”

He made a blowing sound. The young Ben Duryea might have refused me; the tired, middle-aged Ben Duryea said, “I suppose if I had my printer on and I happened to hit the right buttons and you happened to be standing over here while my back was turned...”

He tapped a couple of keys and the printer began to hum and whir. It didn’t take long for a photo printout to appear. Duryea was on his feet, shrugging into his jacket, when I plucked Charlie Bright’s likeness out of the tray, glanced at it briefly, and folded it into my pocket.

“Time for me to hit the road,” he said. He straightened his tie, yawned, rotated his head the way you do when your neck is stiff, and then grimaced. “Christ, some days. I’m getting too old for this job.”

“Some jobs are like that.”

“Don’t tell me you never think about packing it in, spending more time with your family instead of with the bottom feeders. Hell, your face looks like you got into it with one or two of that type recently.”

He’d been too busy to read the papers or listen to TV news, which allowed me to ignore the second statement and respond only to the first. “Sometimes,” I said.

“I think about it a lot. But I probably won’t do it. Die on the job instead of in the saddle at home in bed... of a massive coronary if not some jerkoff’s Saturday night special. My problem is, I never learned how to relax. Maybe guys like us can learn, though. You think?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe we can.”

I drove across the Bay Bridge to Emeryville and Eastside Meat Packers. The burly warehouse foreman I spoke to there pulled a disgusted face when I asked for Charlie Bright. “Not working today,” he said. “Called in sick again.”

“Again?”

“Getting to be a habit the past few weeks. We don’t mind giving ex-cons a break, but they got to show up regular and pull their weight. Bright’s not doing either one. I told him this morning — one more sick day and his ass is fired.”

The rooming house address Ben Duryea had given me was in a semi-industrial area close to downtown Oakland. The woman who ran the place said, “He don’t live here anymore. I kicked him out more than two weeks ago.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t pay his rent, that’s why. I don’t allow freeloaders. Pay up on time or they’re history.”

“Why didn’t you report this to his parole officer? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

“Told my daughter to take care of that. Mean she didn’t? Damn that girl; I can’t trust her to do nothing except run around with that no-good boyfriend of hers.”

I checked back with Eastside Meat Packers by phone, used Ben Duryea’s name to get their personnel department to look up Bright’s employee file. The address they had for him was the Oakland rooming house. Bright hadn’t bothered to inform his employers that he’d moved, either.

When I walked into the office shortly before noon, Tamara said, “You’re lucky you got me as your assistant, you know it?”

“Sure I know it. What’d you do that makes you look so smug?”

“Some PR, my man.”

“What kind of PR?”

“Media kind, best there is. Reporter and cameraman from Channel Seven showed up a while ago, wanted an interview about the two murders. You know about Cohalan getting wasted, right?”

“Fuentes called me in yesterday to ID the body. Didn’t I mention that in my phone message?”

“No, and they done surprised me with it. But I was smooth as silk. Gave ’em their interview and plenty more.”

“Tamara... what’d you tell them?”

“Nothing you won’t like, don’t worry. What a fine detective you are, how you always putting out for our clients, how much you taught me. No bullshit, just the wide-eyed truth. Man, they ate it up.”

“Terrific.”

“Yeah,” she said, misreading my reaction. “Now I’m glad I let Horace talk me into upscaling my image. I’m gonna look like I belong on Oprah, foxy black lady PI with butter just oozin’ out my mouth. We’ll have to beat off the new clients with a stick.”

Maybe so, but it did not set well with me; I wished she hadn’t done it. The last thing I needed right now was more media attention, a rush of new clients. But I didn’t say any of this to Tamara. Why burst her bubble? She was pleased with herself, believed she’d done a good thing with the best of intentions. So young, such a child of the new fast-track millenium where image and publicity and self-promotion ruled. Intellectually she understood what had happened to me Friday night, but its emotional baggage and effects were not within her experience. And I hoped to God they never would be. No one can understand what it’s like to be a victim of mindless violence except the survivors.

I asked her, “When did they say the interview would air?”

“Tonight. Six o’clock news.”

“If I’m near a TV I’ll be sure to watch,” I lied.

“No problem if you’re not. I already called up Horace and told him to tape it.”

I eased her off the subject by saying, “Right now we’ve got work to do. Any new information for me?”

“One piece on Byers. May not mean much.”

“Give.”

“Girl didn’t graduate with her high school class in Lodi. Never did get her diploma. Made me wonder, so I accessed some public records. What do you think?”

“Pregnant?”

“Right on. Knocked up at seventeen.”

“She have the baby?”

“Six-pound, nine-ounce boy. Kevin Paul.”

“Who’s the father?”

“Grant Johnson. Year older, went to the same high school.”

“He marry her?”

“Nope. Not in California or Nevada, anyway.”

“Who ended up with the kid? Not Byers?”

“Still working on that. Might be the father, might be she gave it up for adoption.”

“What else have you got on Grant Johnson?”

“Born in Lodi like Byers, played football and basketball in high school, worked as a truck driver and plumber’s helper before and after graduation. No criminal record.”

“Family wouldn’t be Australian, by any chance?”

“Uh-uh. American WASP.”

“See if you can get a photo of him anyway, or at least a general description.”

“Will do.”

“Here’s some more work for you. Pull up whatever you can on a character named Jackie Spoons — strongarm type reputed to be involved in the crystal meth trade. He’s a Greek, real name Andropopolous or something similar. What I’m most interested in is a connection between him and Dingo or any other Australian, him and Jay Cohalan and/or Charlie Bright.”

“You think one of those dudes is Baldy?”

“Not Jackie Spoons or Bright. But they might be mixed up with him in some way.”

Tamara’s self-satisfaction had rubbed away. She seemed to be seeing me clearly for the first time since I came in; her brown eyes showed concern. “You look tired,” she said. “You okay? I mean...”

“I know what you mean. Hanging in there.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“That’s my dawg,” she said, but she wasn’t smiling.

I brought a cup of coffee to my desk. Tamara had laid a message on the blotter to call Joe DeFalco at the Chronicle. When I got DeFalco on the line, I ran the bunch of names by him. The only one that rang bells was Jay Cohalan, and only because of the double homicide.

“Check your morgue files, will you, Joe? See if you can turn up any links among Jackie Spoons, Dingo, and the others.”

“Quid pro quo,” he said. “If there’s an exclusive here...”

“You’ll get it, don’t worry. Same deal we’ve always had.”

“That Sentinels business,” he said reminiscently. “Man, I should’ve had a Pulitzer nomination for my expose.”

“Your expose. Right. Joe DeFalco, fearless investigative reporter. All you did, buddy, was write up what I handed you.”

“Sure, but I wrote it so damn well.”

Joe DeFalco, egotist and bullshitter.

I had some other casework to do, but my head wasn’t into it. I plugged away sporadically while Tamara went to get us a cold lunch; gave it up and considered a call to Nick Kinsella. Counterproductive, I decided. He was not a man you could prod, especially not when he was doing you a favor.

On impulse I took the plastic chip out of my wallet and studied it again, trying to get an idea. I’d shown it to Kerry yesterday, but if it was some kind of advertising gimmick, she knew nothing about it. Thumbing through the Yellow Pages had been a waste of time. Lucky Buffalo Chip. Remember the Alamo! Signifying what, and why had Cohalan been carrying the chip?

I was still fiddling with it when Tamara came back. She plunked one of two paper sacks down in front of me, paused, and then asked, “What’s that you got there?”

Young eyes, eagle eyes. I showed her the chip.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “The Alamo.”

“You recognize this?”

“Sure. Don’t tell me you hang out down there.”

“Down where?”

“The Alamo. Somebody gave it to you, huh?”

“Mel Bishop. Carolyn Dain found it in her husband’s pocket.”

“No shit?”

“Tamara.”

“Sorry. Doesn’t seem like that dude’s scene, either.”

“What scene? What’s the Alamo?”

“Mean you don’t know?”

“Would I be asking if I did?”

“Salsa scene. Tex-mex food and music.”

“Restaurant? Club?”

“Both. Big place down the Peninsula, tex-mex barbecue on one side, salsa club on the other.”

“Where down the Peninsula?”

“Belmont.”

Belmont was one of the towns strung like beads between San Francisco and San Jose, a good twenty-five miles south and close to Redwood City, where Tamara’s father was on the police force and she’d been born and raised.

“And they give these out to their customers?”

“Right. To anybody spends twenty-five bucks or more. Good for a dollar off in the bar or restaurant. ‘Remember the Alamo!’ so you won’t forget where you got it.”

“How recently were you there?”

“Six months, about. Horace likes barbecue, I like to boogie.”

“What kind of place is it?”

“Just told you, tex-mex food and salsa music—”

“I don’t mean that. What kind of clientele?”

“Young folks, mostly. Cool crowd.”

“It have any kind of rep?”

“Rep? Oh, like a drug deli?”

“Like that.”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“But some people who go there use drugs.”

“Some people everywhere use drugs.”

“My point is, you could score there if you had the right connections.”

“Same answer. You can score just about anywhere if you got the right connections. Think that’s why Cohalan went to the Alamo?”

“There’re tex-mex restaurants and salsa clubs here in the city,” I said. “Belmont’s a long way from his office downtown, a long way from Daly City.”

“Well, could be he didn’t like to pick up his pussy... ’scuse me, his women too close to home. Could be that’s where he met Byers.”

“Also possible. But I still like the drug angle.” I took the chip from Tamara, returned it to my wallet. “There’s something else that makes me like it, too.”

She was smiling now, that knowing little grin of hers. Quick on the uptake, as always. “Gotcha,” she said. “Charlie Bright.”

Born in Texas, and the Alamo was a tex-mex hangout. Arrested with Byers for dealing methamphetamines, and both Byers and Cohalan were crankheads. Somebody had been supplying them. Maybe Jackie Spoons, maybe the Aussie called Dingo... and maybe a young guy on parole who had suddenly begun missing work and changed his address without telling his PO, both indicators of drug-related recidivism.

“Yeah,” I said. “Charlie Bright.”