Breakdown

Chapter 11

It was raining again when I got back to the city-a hard rain, wind-driven into diagonal sweeps. Close to a week straight now of this kind of weather, and no immediate relief in sight. It began to get to you when it went on this long; a damp gray began to form inside you, too, like a kind of parasitic mold. Nice thought. What a gloomy old fart I was turning into. I laughed at myself, wryly, as I turned off 101 onto Bayshore Boulevard. Look on the bright side, pal. With all this rain, maybe there won’t be any more dire rumblings about drought and water rationing come summer, and the water company won’t have an excuse to raise its rates again.

The way it looked, Thomas Lujack’s recent death hadn’t done any more to slacken activity at Containers, Inc., than had Frank Hanauer’s. The wheels of industry keep right on grinding, all right, through thick and thin; dead bosses have about as much effect as a ten-minute coffee break. I parked in the lot and hustled inside through the rain, laughing at myself again. Mr. Metaphor: Second-Rate Philosophy at Cut-Rate Prices.

Teresa Melendez wasn’t at her usual station; this time I got to talk to a tight-lipped guy in a corduroy jacket who seemed annoyed at having to work the switchboard. Yes, Mr. Coleman Lujack was in today but he wasn’t seeing anybody. I gave my name and said my business was urgent and asked him to please request ten minutes of Mr. Lujack’s time. Reluctantly, he used the intercom; talked and listened for ten seconds, disconnected, and said in I-told-you-so tones, “Mr. Lujack is sorry, he isn’t seeing anybody today.”

Especially not me, I thought.

I said, “Rafael Vega. He come back to work?”

“No. And he still hasn’t called in. Now if that’s all, I have work to do.”

“Me too,” I said to myself on the way out. “But nobody seems to want to help me do it.”

* * * *

The office was locked up tight; Eberhardt still hadn’t put in an appearance. There was only one message on the answering machine, and it made me swear out loud. It was from a screwball Hollywood TV producer named Bruce Littlejohn, who had latched onto me after the publicity surrounding my abduction and escape. He was bound and determined that he was going to make a TV movie about my life; I was bound and determined he wasn’t. I’d told him so the last time we talked, not mincing words. That had been over a month ago, and I’d dared to believe that he had finally gone away. Fat chance. He was like malaria or herpes: Once you were exposed to him, you couldn’t seem to get rid of him.

I didn’t listen to his message; as soon as I heard his voice I flipped the switch to rewind. While some old coffee reheated on the hot plate, I took care of my mail and got no answer on a call to Rafael Vega’s home number. The coffee tasted stale, and the sandwich I’d bought on the way from Containers, Inc., wasn’t much better. I was forcing down the last of each when Eberhardt showed up.

He came in blowing and shivering and smacking his gloved hands together. “Christ, it’s cold out there. Windchill factor must be zero. Some damn weather.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Makes you want to stick a feather up your ass and fly south for the winter.”

He stared at me for a beat and then laughed. “That’s pretty good,” he said. “You make that up or what?”

“Heard it from Bob Hope.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” It was something my old man used to say on days like this. I hadn’t thought about it in two decades or more. Why it should have popped into my mind today was a question I didn’t want to have answered, either by Eb or myself. The less I dwelt on my old man, the better.

While Eberhardt poured himself a cup of coffee, I told him about my conversation with Eileen Lujack. He said, ” ‘The coyotes are going to make us rich.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Something to do with illegals, maybe. Seems to me I’ve heard the word before, in that context.”

He shrugged. “You think it’s important?”

“It might be. The money angle is, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah. Thomas couldn’t have afforded a four-hundred-thousand-dollar piece of property five years ago, not on his annual draw and what the company was worth back then. We should have dug deeper into his background, I guess. But hell, he was our client; we weren’t trying to get anything on him.”

“Or Coleman.”

“Or Coleman. So what do you think? They’re mixed up in something a lot shadier than hiring undocumented aliens?”

“That’s how it adds up. And if they are, Hanauer had to know about it too. It’s got to be the hidden motive in both murders.”

“You really think Pendarves was framed, huh?”

“More so all the time.”

“But why? It just doesn’t make sense with Thomas the victim.”

“Maybe Pendarves has some idea. And that’s another thing that keeps bothering me: Why haven’t the police found a trace of him since Tuesday night?”

“He picked a hole somewhere and pulled it in after him.”

“I hope that’s it.”

“What other explanation is there?”

“He could be dead,” I said.

“Dead?”

“Murdered, just like Thomas. Can you think of a better way to cement a frame against him?”

“Christ. Killed the same night as Thomas, you mean?”

“Before or after, and his body dumped somewhere. That could be the reason his car was found abandoned in Golden Gate Park.”

He thought about it. “I like the other theory better.”

“So do I … for now. If Pendarves is alive and holed up somewhere, it figures to be right here in the city. And that probably means somebody’s hiding him.”

“One of his pals from the Hideaway?”

“Or one of his pals from work. Antonio Rivas, for instance.”

“No way,” Eberhardt said. “I told you, they weren’t close.”

“You also told me Rivas was holding something back. Maybe it involves Pendarves.”

“Rivas as the third witness? I thought we ruled that out.”

“We did. As a matter of fact, I’m inclined to rule out the third-witness angle entirely.”

“That makes two of us.”

“What I’m thinking,” I said, “is that maybe Rivas knows something more about the Lujacks and their tie-in with the illegals. And that maybe he also let that something slip to Pendarves.”

“So you want me to have another talk with him.”

“Wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t hurt for you to check into Coleman’s background and life-style either … see if he’s been spending more money the past five years than he should have been.”

“Now? I thought we were still on hold until Thomas’s widow makes up her mind.”

“She’ll come through. Why waste time?”

“Uh-huh. All right, what the hell-I want answers as much as you do.” He drained his cup as I got to my feet. “So what’re you gonna be doing while I tackle Coleman and Rivas?”

“Finding out what happened to Rafael Vega,” I said.

* * * *

La Moderna market was on Howard Street, half a block off Sixteenth in the heart of the Mission. A display window full of fresh fish and hanging strands of chorizo flanked the entrance on the left; on the right under an awning were open bins of vegetables and green and red chilis. There were customers inside but the place wasn’t crowded; it was a little after three and still raining hard. The butcher shop and meat counter ran the bodega’s full length and was staffed by two men in blood-spattered aprons. One of them, using a cleaver to whack a chunk of beef into soup meat, was Paco Vega.

Finding him hadn’t been difficult. Eberhardt had neglected to ask the Vegas’ talkative neighbor where Paco worked, but when I’d looked her up twenty minutes ago, she’d given me the information without any prodding. While I was in Albert Alley I’d rung the doorbell at the Vega flat, on the chance that Mrs. Vega was home. There had been no answer.

Paco was intent on his work and didn’t see me right away. The other butcher was telling a heavyset woman in black that they didn’t have any sesos today; she didn’t seem to want to believe him. I stood alone at the counter, watching Paco wield the cleaver. He did it with short, clean, professional strokes, but the strokes were harder than necessary; there was a dark, set expression on his face, and each time the blade thumped down, white muscle-knots appeared at the corners of his mouth. Paco Vega was an angry young man.

He got even angrier when he finished and looked up and saw me. His eyes blazed for a couple of seconds; then he slammed the cleaver into the block, burying the upper edge a good two inches deep, and walked hard to where I was.

“What the hell you doing here, man?” he said in a low, strained voice. “I thought I told you to stay away from me.”

“Your mother, you said, not you.”

“Yeah, well, it goes for me too.”

“We need to talk, Paco.”

“I got nothing to say to you.”

“Now. In private.”

“I just told you …”

“About your father.”

“… What about him?”

“He’s in trouble and you know it.”

“You’re full of shit, pancho.”

“Am I? Then he’s no longer missing? Everything’s fine at your house again?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I think it is,” I said. “It might also be police business. Now do we go someplace private and talk?”

We locked gazes for about five seconds. But worry or fear had taken the edge off his anger; his eyes flicked away from mine and he licked his lips. “Through the door in back, near the coolers,” he said, and walked off that way himself.

The door in back was actually two-swing doors with a sign on one of them that said No Entrada. I pushed through into a storeroom piled with crates and boxes, some full and some empty. Paco came through another swing door from the butcher shop, and without looking at me or saying anything he moved along an aisleway past the meat storage locker. I followed him out through a door at the rear, onto a short, narrow, L-shaped loading dock. There was an alley back there, and a space just wide enough for a medium-sized truck to pull in alongside the dock and then to back up to the short arm of the L for unloading. The space and the dock and the rain-swept alley were all deserted now.

Paco moved away from the door by several paces, in close to the building where the wind wasn’t quite as sharp, then stopped and turned to face me. “So?” he said.

I said, “Where’s your father?”

“Oh come on, man. You think I know? He’s been gone four days now, no word, no nothing. My mother cares but I don’t. The hell with him.”

“Suppose he’s been hurt or worse?”

“Yeah, sure. That’s what she thinks. Not me.”

“What do you think?”

“Uh-uh. I came out here because of what you think.”

“He’s involved in hiring illegals,” I said. “Has been for years. I don’t think that; I know it.”

“Big deal. So’re a couple thousand others in this city, Hispanics and Anglos both. Go call the INS. You think they care? They don’t care, not about small-timers like my old man.”

“Maybe he’s not such a small-timer.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Coyotes, Paco. The coyotes.”

It was a pretty good blind shot. He went tight; you could see him drawing in on himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, pancho.”

“No, huh?”

“No. What’s coyotes got to do with anything?”

“You tell me.”

“I already told you.” He shook his head. “Man, you must think I’m some kind of dumb spick.”

“On the contrary. I think you’re a pretty smart Latino.”

“Yeah? Then why’d you mention the cops inside? So I’d come out here and tell you all I know about my old man and the wetbacks, right? Like I’m so stupid I don’t know the city cops can’t mess in INS business.”

“They can if there’s homicide involved,” I said.

Magic word. He repeated it, blinking: “Homicide?”

“Two of your father’s employers in the past month. First Frank Hanauer and now Thomas Lujack.”

“So? Some guy named Pendarves took Lujack out.”

“Did he? I don’t think so.”

Paco ran the back of his hand over the bandit’s mustache, rubbed the palm down over the front of his bloody apron. “What’re you trying to say? My old man was mixed up in murder?”

“Maybe.”

“Bullshit. He didn’t have nothing to do with either killing.”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

“You got proof he did? Show me some proof.”

“Why’d he disappear if he’s not guilty of anything?”

“Quit pushing me. I told you, I don’t know why.”

“But you’ve got some idea. Maybe your mother has too. If I have to go talk to her again, I will.”

That was the wrong thing to say; all it did was stir up his machismo. The white muscle showed again at the corners of his mouth. “Stay away from her,” he said. “I’m warning you, man-stay away from my mother!”

He punctuated the words by delivering a flat-palmed punch to the fleshy part of my chest, above the heart. There was enough force behind it, and he caught me unawares enough, so that I was driven backward into the building wall. I hit it hard with my shoulders and spine-hard enough to unfocus my eyes for a second. Any harder and there might have been some damage to my backbone.

Anger kindled bright and hot. I came off the wall sideways, like a ball bouncing crooked, and caught one handful of his apron and another handful of his hair and spun him around and slammed him up against the building. I had an urge to hit him, hurt him; managed to fight it off. He grunted, struggled, tried to punch my kidneys, but I had him pinned tight, with my hip and leg hard into his crotch so he couldn’t use his feet. The blows he struck were short-armed and didn’t hurt.

It wasn’t long before he quit trying to fight. He said between his teeth, “Anglo bastard!”

“Easy now. Unless you want to keep things rough.”

His mouth cramped up; he would have spit in my face if I hadn’t had his head turned at an off angle.

“Where’s your father?” I asked him.

“Fuck you.”

I pulled his hair, not gently. “Talk to me, Paco.”

“I don’t know where he is!”

“Tell me what he’s into, then.”

“… All right! You want to know what he’s into? He’s into young pussy, all the young pussy he can get!”

I was silent. There was nothing for me to say just yet.

“Why you think my mother drinks? Him and his young pussy.” It had been bottled up inside him for a long time; now that he’d let some of it out, the rest came spewing forth like vomit purge. “She knows he’s gonna leave someday, known it for years, but she pretends he won’t-keeps right on pretending we’re a big happy family. Well, now she’s got to face it and she can’t. Four days means he’s not coming back this time but she still can’t face it so she drinks herself sick and prays for him to come home the whole damn time. He’s a pig, he treats her like shit, and all she does is drink and pray for him to come home.”

I let go of him and backed up a step, all in one motion. But he was not going to make any more trouble with me; it was his old man he hated, his old man he wanted to hurt. He leaned against the wall and hit it with his fist-three times, hard, hurting only himself.

I asked, soft, “Who is she? The woman you think he ran off with?”

“Who knows? Some young Latina with big tits, you can bet on that.”

“You don’t have any idea who she is?”

“No.” He smoothed his hair and then spat on the dock, but not in my direction. “He didn’t brag to anybody like he usually does. Not this time.”

“Would he leave the city with her? Go back to Mexico, maybe?”

“Depends on how much dinero he had put away. What’s to keep him here? Not my mother, not me, not any of his scams.”

“What scams?” I said.

“Huh?”

“His scams, you said. What scams?”

“You already called it, man. Wetbacks.”

“Just hiring them? Or is it more than that, like smuggling them across the border? Is that the reason for his trips to San Diego and Mexico?”

Paco watched me for a clutch of seconds. His hard facade was back in place; the code of machismo would never let it crack for long. “Uh-uh,” he said through a tight, bitter smile. “I’m not gonna do your work for you. Not when it comes to my people.”

“You want your father punished, don’t you?”

“For what he’s done to my mother. But that’s my job- mine and a good lawyer’s. The other thing … no. You want him for that, you go get him on your own. You and the fuckin INS.”

He shoved along the wall toward the door. I didn’t try to stop him. When he got there he stopped and half-turned and said, “I meant what I said about staying away from my mother. She’s had enough crap. You bother her again, you’ll be damn sorry.”

And then he was gone.

* * * *

He’s still sick with the flu.

The memory fragment came to me just after I exited the alley onto Howard, on my way to where the car was parked. I’d been walking fast because of the rain; now I walked even faster, remembering.

On Tuesday Coleman Lujack had told Eberhardt and me that Rafael hadn’t called in to explain his absence. Today, the tight-lipped office worker had claimed Vega still hadn’t called in. But yesterday, Teresa Melendez had told me on the phone that Vega was “still sick with the flu.” And now she was off the job too.

Some young Latina with big tits, Paco had said.

Teresa Melendez?

* * * *