Bleeders

17

So now I had most of it.

Dingo: Second-generation Australian, or else in this country long enough to have lost most of his accent. Possibly a part-time worker for a San Francisco moving company as of two years ago. Crankhead and small-time crank dealer. Shacked up or at least sleeping with Annette Byers before she took up with Jay Cohalan, and evidently still tight with her during the affair. Big, hard, mean, violent, and not very bright — a deadly combination.

Scenario: Cohalan meets Byers, probably at the Alamo. He’s already worked out the scam to get his hands on his wife’s inheritance in small bites, and makes the mistake of confiding this to Byers. She in turn tells Dingo and the two of them cook up a scheme to doublecross Cohalan and steal Carolyn Dain’s money for themselves. She works on Cohalan to go for the big bite, all the remaining inheritance money in one payoff, no doubt using sex as the lure. He gives in, they set it up. And that’s when I come into it, the monkey wrench that fouls up the works.

It was Dingo, not Cohalan, that she was waiting for at her apartment Thursday night. Cohalan wasn’t supposed to show at all, at least not until it was too late and Dingo and Byers had made off with the cash; that was why she was surprised to see him. And when Dingo finally arrives and finds Cohalan there and the money gone with me, he’s furious. Cohalan is the first target of his rage, right away or after he’s driven out to Daly City and found Carolyn Dain gone. By this time the money’s an obsession fueled by frenzy and drugs. One option is to go after me, but for all he knows I’ve already turned over the seventy-five thousand. He decides to wait for Carolyn Dain to come home. Meanwhile, sometime that night, they load a beaten-up Cohalan into his car and take him out by Candlestick, one of them driving the Camry and the other following. Exit Cohalan.

When Carolyn Dain returns to her house on Friday, Dingo is waiting for her. She tells him I still have the cash, he forces her to make those calls to my office. Then he kills her and waits for me to make the delivery. He’s worked up a pretty good hate for me by then, for all the trouble I’ve caused him, so I’m scheduled to die, too. After the misfire, the fight, the money grab, he’d still want me dead but not badly enough to risk stalking me. The money’s all he really cares about. So he and Byers go on the run, or to ground somewhere, or buy a load of crank to sell, or do any number of other things with the cash.

The scenario played out. That was the way it had gone down, or close to it.

All right. There was one more thing I needed to know, and one thing left for me to do. Yeah, just two little things.

Find out Dingo’s real name.

And then find him and Byers.

Tamara was on the phone when I came into the office. So I went and got the San Francisco Yellow Pages and spread them open on my desk. Movers and Full Service Storage. Christ, there were twenty-six pages of listings-full-page ads, half-page ads, spot ads, box ads, and single lines of names and addresses. A couple of hundred companies large and small, from AA Worldwide Moving to Zandor Transportation, Inc. It would take Tamara and me the rest of today and part of tomorrow to canvass all the numbers, and at that we’d get answering machines, nonresponses, and a bunch of uncooperative individuals...

Something tickled the back of my mind, but it got lost when I heard the phone go down on Tamara’s desk. I glanced over there. “Anything?”

“Might be,” she said. “That was Grant Johnson I was talking to.”

“Who?”

“Father of Byers’ kid. I finally tracked him down. He’s a plumber, lives up in Woodland now.”

“And?”

“Married, three kids — two of ‘em with the present wife. Third’s the boy he had with Byers. So I called him up at work, said I was a reporter for the Chronicle and had he seen Byers recently and did he have any idea where she might be.”

“Took a chance doing that. What’d he say?”

“Got real upset. Knew she was wanted by the law, but what’d that have to do with him? Said he hadn’t seen the bitch in years, didn’t want nothing to do with her, don’t call him again or he’d sic his lawyer on me and the paper both. Sounded scared to me.”

“You think he might’ve been lying?”

“Hiding something, maybe. Hard to be sure over the phone, you know what I’m saying?”

“Worth talking to in person?”

“Might be, but Woodland’s a long way from here.”

“Only a couple of hours. What else did you pick up on him?”

“Not much. Your model citizens, him and his wife both. Melanie’s her name. No criminal records, one speeding ticket for him five years ago. Belong to the Methodist Church, the PTA, Greenpeace.”

“If he’s that clean,” I mused aloud, “what was he doing with a screwed-up crankhead like Byers?”

“Maybe she wasn’t into drugs when he knew her. And you know what they say about a hard-on.”

“Yes, and I don’t want to hear you say it. What’s Johnson’s home address in Woodland?”

She consulted her computer screen. “Seven-ninety Rio Oso. Work address: RiteClean Plumbing and Heating, twenty-six hundred Benson Avenue. Also Woodland.”

I wrote down the addresses. While I was doing that, the phone rang again. Tamara answered, listened, indicated with her hand that the call was for her.

The Yellow Pages were still spread open on my desk blotter. As I pocketed my notebook, one of the large ads caught and held my eye — and the tickling sensation returned. The ad itself had nothing to do with it. Something else...

Got it. Quickly I flipped pages. There were only three listings under the letter V: Valley Relocation and Storage, Vector Transportation, and Viselli Van and Storage. I smacked my fist down on the page.

Dingo 4.15 V.V.S.

V.V.S. — Viselli Van and Storage.

It was a medium-size place, three stories and truck yard that covered half a block at the foot of Potrero Hill. Dot-com firms had gobbled up some real estate in the area, but the pocket here was still blue-collar industrial by day, a meeting ground for hookers and their johns at night. Business at Viselli Van and Storage must be pretty good; they had an office staff of half a dozen. The one I talked to was a Mrs. Lupinski, a pinch-faced woman in her fifties with gray hair so stiff-looking it might have been lacquered and gold-framed eyeglasses dangling from a silver chain.

“I’m looking for a man who might be employed here,” I told her. “An Australian who goes by the nickname Dingo.”

The name was like a squirt of lemon juice: her mouth puckered with instant distaste. “What do you want with him?”

“He does work here then?”

“He did until last week, and I don’t mind telling you I’m glad he’s gone.”

“When last week?”

“Thursday.”

“Quit or fired?”

“Fired, and rightly so. He started a fight with one of our customers. A fistfight, no less, without any provocation. Are you with the police?”

“Not exactly. Why do you ask?”

“Drugs,” she said, lowering her voice. The pucker grew even more pronounced. “He’s a drug addict. Did you know that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” On drugs, probably, and already out of control when he started the fistfight. It hadn’t been much of a step from that to crossing the line into cold-blooded murder. “What’s his real name?”

“His name?”

“I know him only as Dingo.”

“Manganaris,” she said as if it were a dirty word. “Harold Manganaris. Harold is a perfectly good name, but he hated it. He insisted everyone call him by that silly Dingo.”

All right. Harold Manganaris. All right.

“Would you spell the last name, please.”

She spelled it. “He has a foul mouth, too,” she said. “You should have heard some of the things he said to me, to other women here. He should’ve been fired long ago. Long ago.”

“Would it be possible for me to see his personnel file?”

“Oh, no, that isn’t allowed.”

“Well, could you at least give me his home address? And the names and addresses of any relatives? Please, Mrs. Lupinski. It’s very important.”

She glanced around as though she were afraid someone might be eavesdropping. Then she said conspiratorially, “Just a minute,” and went away to her desk for a little time. When she came back she half-whispered a street and apartment number on Duboce.

“Relatives, next of kin?”

“None. He provided only the barest facts. He shouldn’t have been hired in the first place, if you ask me.”

“Did he have any friends here? Anyone he worked with regularly?”

“No. He’s not the kind of man who makes friends. Everyone here disliked him, no one wanted to work closely with him. Even Mr. Viselli disliked him. I can’t understand why he wasn’t fired long ago.”

I thanked her, and she said as I turned to leave, “He belongs in jail. I mean it, that man really should be in jail.”

Sooner or later, Mrs. Lupinski.

Sooner or later.

The Duboce address was a rundown apartment hotel a couple of blocks west of Market Street, within hailing distance of the massive and deserted U.S. Mint building — the kind of place that you know as soon as you walk in has rodent, roach, and heating problems. It was also a dead end. I had conversations with a beady-eyed little guy who called himself “the day man,” and an elderly tenant who was hanging around the lobby because “I ain’t got nothing better to do.” They both knew Dingo; they didn’t like him any more than Mrs. Lupinski had. He’d lived in the building for close to two years, alone in a single room, and moved out ten months ago. No forwarding address, naturally, since he hadn’t bothered to notify Viselli Van and Storage of his change of residence. Kept to himself, hardly spoke to the other tenants — “Snotty son of a bitch when he did say something,” the elderly gent volunteered — and seemed not to have spent much time on the premises. Friends: none. Visitors: none that either of them could recall.

You’d think that somebody with an uncommon name like Harold Manganaris would be easy enough to run a background check on, but that’s not necessarily the case. Variables, any number of them, make every BG check different. Some take a few hours; others take days, even weeks. There may be an unlimited amount of of data available on what Tamara calls “the information superhighway,” but finding it, accessing it, cross-examining it, and fitting it together can be a chore even for a computer hacker with her skills.

I’d called her as soon as I left Viselli Van and Storage, so when I got back to the agency at 3:50 she’d been running Manganaris for about an hour and a half. That was enough time to pull together a workable preliminary package — if the variables were few and favorable. But they weren’t. When you want something badly enough, the universe being the perverse place it is, that’s often the way things shake out.

Tamara wagged her head and said, “No luck so far. I accessed public and CJIS records and most of the Bay Area phone directories. Nobody named Manganaris listed anywhere, no record of birth or marriage, no county, state or federal criminal record or outstanding warrants. Man’s never been arrested, at least in California.”

“Lucky until now. What about the DMV?”

“Our contact’s gone for the day and I can’t get into their files on my own. Well, maybe I could but it’d take a while, and my daddy’d kick my ass if I got arrested for illegal hacking.”

“Try checking with the INS, see if Manganaris is a resident alien. They’ll have family history if he is.”

“Already thought of that. Next up.”

She called the local Immigration and Naturalization Service office, went through a glib piece of rigmarole in which she claimed to be personnel director of the agency and needed to know if Harold Manganaris, who had applied for a job with us, had a valid green card and to verify certain information he’d given on his application. Wasted effort. No green card. So he was either a citizen by birth or adoption, or an unregistered alien.

Tamara contacted the Australian embassy, to determine if he had or had ever had a valid Australian passport. They said they’d get back to her, but when five o’clock rolled around they hadn’t called. Tamara hadn’t found out anything from any other source by then, either.

Which left me with a decision to make. Hanging around, waiting for something to turn up, was playing hell with my nerves, and it would be worse tomorrow. I craved movement, activity. One thing I could do was to drive up to Woodland and have a talk with Grant Johnson, find out if he was in fact hiding useful information about Annette Byers. Fine, but should I make the drive tonight or wait until first thing in the morning? If I left now I’d have to fight commute traffic through the city, across the Bay Bridge, and most of the way on Highway 80 as far as Vacaville — a two-hour trip stretched out into a three-hour-plus one. I just wasn’t up to it. Tired from all the running around today, not much sleep the past three nights, still stiff and sore... I needed rest more than anything else. The drive would be much easier in the morning, going against the commute. And if Tamara turned up a lead that demanded immediate attention, I could always reverse direction without losing too much time.

Tomorrow, then. Push myself too hard, and I wouldn’t be in shape to deal with Manganaris when I finally found him.

Kerry had to work late — I phoned her before I left the office — so I picked up Emily at the Simpsons. They were Diamond Heights neighbors, the Simpsons, whose daughter went to the same school and was the same age. Emily had never had many friends, but she seemed to be slowly forming a bond with Carla Simpson. Encouraging. So was the fact that she seemed to be coping better since our talk Saturday night, no longer quite so frightened or withdrawn.

I made an effort to spend quality time with her this night. She was good with computers, as most kids are these days, and I let her show me some things on her PC. Simple, basic stuff, but I had to admit that I found it of mild interest. Resistance waning a bit? Maybe. I was never going to be a full-fledged convert to modern technology, but even technophobes can get to know the enemy without compromising their principles. I said as much to Emily, and she laughed. That in itself made the computer lesson worthwhile.

I suggested we make dinner and surprise Kerry. She liked the idea, so we put together a meat lasagna and a green salad, messing up the kitchen and then giving it a good cleaning afterward. She was animated the whole time; I heard her laugh again, several times. The way she looked at me tonight, with more love than fear and uncertainty, led me to remember that she’d called me Daddy in that house in Daly City. She hadn’t done it again since, but I found myself hoping she would. I wanted to hear her use that word more than I would have thought possible a year or so ago.

Kerry was surprised and pleased when she came home. The good domestic mood lasted through dinner and afterward — all surface cheer, the kind that can be shattered by the wrong word or action, but that didn’t happen. On our way back to normal.

Later, when Kerry and I were in bed, I drew her close and said, “I’ve shut you out the past few days and I feel bad about it. I’m sorry, babe.”

“I understand what you’re going through.”

“I know you do, but you’re hurting, too. Selfish and stupid of me not to confide in you. My God, I talked to Emily about what happened. And Tamara knows more than you about what I’ve been doing since.”

“Do you want to talk about it now?”

“Yes,” I said, and I told her about Harold Manganaris, how I’d found out about him and what I believed he and Annette Byers had done. Two things I didn’t tell her, because I still did not have the right words to express them: the sense of internal bleeding and the constant reminder of the clicks.

She said, “Have you told all of that to the police?”

“Not yet. Not until I get closer to Manganaris.”

“How close? You feel you have to confront him?”

“At some point, yes. But not in any physical way — none of that revenge crap. Just to let him know to his face that I helped nail him. And it doesn’t have to be before he’s arrested. In jail afterward is good enough.”

“Then why—?”

“I need to feel I’ve done everything I possibly can before I step aside. Manganaris and Byers heaped chaos on me, my client, you and Emily by association. The job of bringing them down is as much mine as the system’s. It’s the only way I’ll ever have any peace of mind.”

“Closure,” Kerry said.

“That’s as good a word for it as any.”

“And the sooner the better.”

“Exactly.”

We lay in silence then, holding each other, warmed by each other. I felt that I could sleep tonight, without evil dreams or night sweats. The clicks were there, but they did not seem to be quite as loud. No, not quite as loud.