Contract Null & Void

Chapter Eight

Darkness, along with fog so wet it was almost drizzle, had fallen on Eureka. Before last night’s hospital visit, O’B had closed out three assignments — a collection, two repos — and had worked five other files inherited from Tony d’Angelo; now he was pounding out the reports on Tony’s portable typewriter in the converted garage.

Two of the subjects had skipped Eureka’s lousy weather and worse employment stats, but he’d put leads in the reports for the San Francisco skip-tracers to work. Two were collections, the third a REPO ON SIGHT O’B was sure he would catch at the subject’s home or employment. He’d also tossed the fear of God into the potential bankrupt, then hired a moving outfit to go in and clear out the man’s storeful of stuff still owned by DKA’s office furniture company client. He’d beat the sheriff by a day.

Whistling to himself, he pulled the final report from the typewriter, put the white original and the yellow copy into the San Francisco mail, stapled the pink face-out to the back of his assignment form, put the green into Tony’s assignment folder.

Tomorrow, that new in-town collection assignment, make the last remaining repo from Tony’s files, get a line on the truck tires. Maybe drive way to hell out toward the coast on Fallen Tree Road after the Dodge Dakota. Meanwhile, tonight, the Rainbow Dancehall where the rock band was playing, find out their schedule and what they looked like, start trying to figure out how to take their instruments away without having his head bashed in.

And, he told himself sternly, no more than two beers, tops.

Fog also in San Francisco. Larry Ballard street-parked in the 200 block of Eddy just before 9:00 P.M. A raunchy-looking man in his 30s, with gray slacks and wild blondish hair and smelling of stale sweat, passed him crossing Jones, talking to himself in tongues. He yelled “I love it” at an Asian woman with a little boy standing on the far corner, did a wild tamure dance at her, thrusting his pelvis suggestively all the way across the intersection, then shook hands with her, tousled the child’s hair, and went on without a backward glance.

Years ago at Mood Indigo, Ballard had repo’d the bartender’s Ford Falcon — twice. First time, the guy stole it back from the dealer; second time, Ballard had been saved from a fistfight only by a beat cop chancing by. Needless to say, that time the Falcon had stayed in the barn for good.

Mood Indigo had gone downhill, not that it had ever been very far uphill. But back then, despite its lousy location, it had been a live blues club. Real music had blasted out through a dark blue facade lit up with bright blue lights outlining the doorway and shining out across the littered Tenderloin sidewalk.

The narrow storefront was still dark blue, but the entryway now wore a steel antithief grillwork — opened for the night trade — and the outside lights were gone. Now just a black curtain around which dim blue light and canned music seeped.

Inside was a single track of narrow-beam blue spots over a bar running the length of the left wall. At the back was the raised stage that Ballard remembered, the upright piano, silent now, still set at an angle to one side. Squarely in front of the stage was a jukebox, but somebody had taste: it was playing Mississippi John Hurt’s “Coffee Blues” rerecording that had helped launch the ’60s blues revival.

A salt-and-pepper couple danced halfheartedly by the juke, three men were draped over the bar like laundry left out in the rain, two couples and a foursome were in the booths. A tall elegant man dressed all in black like an undertaker or an old-time Mississippi riverboat gambler was chatting and laughing with the black bartender. He started out just as Ballard arrived.

They passed each other in the doorway. His hair was blondish brown and cut short, brushed forward over his forehead in a widow’s peak, and the blue, slightly narrowed eyes said riverboat gambler, all the way.

“A foggy night in London town,” he grinned to Ballard.

Lots of Tenderloin characters, but no Bart Heslip. Ballard chose the middle of three empty barstools. “Gimme a draft.”

The bartender drew a beer, scraped off the foam with a tongue depressor, filled it again. Totally black shades hid his eyes, his head was a bald and shining bullet, his neck was thick, his shoulders wide. Through his nose was a nasty-looking gold bull ring.

Ballard laid a brace of five on the bar.

“Listen, I was wondering if a—”

“Forget it, Jack.” The barkeep’s voice sounded as if someone hostile had done something permanent to his vocal cords.

He had spoken to Ballard but had been looking beyond him, then turned away to make change for one of the fives as two bulky men bellied up to the bar, one on either side of Ballard. One was bald as the barkeep, the other blond as Ballard. Both wore tweed jackets and neckties as tasteful as Denver omelettes.

Baldy said, either to Ballard or across him, “Whadda ya do when an epileptic has a seizure in your bathtub?”

Blondy said, “Throw in your laundry and a cup of Dash.”

Then, as if they were rehearsed water ballet movements, each removed a worn leather folder from his pocket, flopped it open to show the bartender a gold SFPD inspector’s shield, with the same practiced ease flipped them shut and disappeared them.

“We’re lookin’ for a black guy s’posed to be a bartender.”

“Here in the Tenderloin. We got a composite.”

“Police sketch artist did it from eyewitness descriptions.”

“Eyewitnesses to what?” grated the black barkeep.

One of them laid a photocopy of a pencil sketch on the bar. The bartender leaned over to give it a look. Ballard leaned over to give it a look. The two cops looked at Ballard exactly as if they had caught him at a peephole watching their wives undress.

“You ain’t seen him around the neighborhood?”

“This is a neighborhood? I thought it was an armpit,” said the bartender in his ruined voice. He added casually to Ballard, “She usually shows up at the Ace in the Hole around three ayem, man, but she ain’t worth stayin’ up for.”

Ballard slapped his empty glass back on the bar, picked up his intact five, pointed at the bartender in thanks and left.

Behind him the one with hair said, “How d’ya know when you’re in an Italian neighborhood?”

“They got burglar alarms on the garbage cans.”

The barkeep asked hoarsely, “On the house, gents?”

Ballard went through the door and out, intrigued by being told when and where to meet a woman he hadn’t asked any questions about, in such a way that it seemed the tag end of a conversation going on before the two cops had arrived.

He had hours to kill until 3:00 A.M. and Ace in the Hole. Would it be pushing his luck to front-tail the cops to their next stop, try to eavesdrop a little? That composite had looked just a hell of a lot like Bart Heslip.

Maybelle Pernod came to clean the empty DKA offices five nights a week at nine o’clock, when all the temp typists and part-time skip-tracers would be gone, and only Mr. K or Giselle might be around — or a field man or two, depending they had reports to catch up on.

Fat, black, and 61, Maybelle been singing spirituals all her life, started out to Sunday Baptist services at her preacher father’s little frame church in south Georgia when she’d been just a pickaninny. When her daddy died her mama had taken the chirren to Atlanta lookin’ for work, but she’d found bad company instead. Maybelle, too — only good thing come from Atlanta had been a wanderin’ man an’ the baby he gave he, her boy Jedediah.

But come Vietnam she’d lost her Jedediah to the war. After that, things had got worse and worse for Maybelle, ’til less’n a year ago, she’d almost taken that final walk with Jesus. Working part-time in a steam laundry, selling her 61-year-old body just to keep a big fancy car — she’d like to of despaired.

But no more, the good Lord had started talking to her again. Never knew what would come into her mind and out of her mouth when she sang, but she knew it came from Jesus.

She emptied Giselle’s wastebasket into the black plastic bag stretched around the inside of her two-wheel janitor’s cart. First Giselle had freed her from that devil of a Lincoln Continental by repossessing it. Then Kenny Warren, who’d been her dead Jedediah’s best friend, had saved her from some trouble and found her work ’til she could afford her own place. These days she walked with her head up. Had her an apartment and this good job Kenny’d got her. Had her some friends. Even Mist’ K’d come around. The folks at DKA had become almost family to her.

Course she really knew who had rescued her — it was Jesus. And he’d been with her ever since. Seemed like recently he’d been trying to tell her something, didn’t know what. When it came out of her mouth, she’d know it was him speaking.

Maybelle picked up her spiritual again, full-out in her big rich contralto:

“Maybelle, that’s some—”

“Eeeekk!”

Kearny finished disjointedly, “—voice you got there.”

“Like to scare me to death, Mist’ Kearny!”

He made a weak apologetic gesture as Maybelle went over and bent, grunting, to retrieve her dust rang from where she had thrown it when Kearny had startled her.

“Just came to pick up some files,” he said. He gave her that smile lit up his face, and departed. Still, the man looked sad, that he did. And him usually so tough. Come Sunday, she’d pray for him at church. She smiled. Mist’ K liked her singing! She started to hum, then sing softly:

Maybelle’s eyes opened wide when she realized the words she was singing. Lord talkin’ to her for sure. She put the dust rag on the corner of the desk and started dancing as she sang, her big, round, sensuous body moving with the spiritual that old blues-playing black musicians like Satchmo had given to the streets:

It was because that police composite had looked exactly like Bart Heslip, had been Bart Heslip, to a tee, that Larry Ballard had gotten out of Mood Indigo in such a hurry — before his face was fixed in the cops’ minds.

And why he was loitering with intent inside the Vietnamese grocery store three doors down from the bar.

Bart was supposed to have left ten days ago with his lady, Corinne, to visit her folks in Detroit. So why was he still in town, asking Ballard to meet him at Mood Indigo? And why did the cops think he — or his twin — was bartending in the ’Loin?

Luckily, Ballard was wearing the reversible jacket Bart himself thought was your best basic item of disguise. Change the color, change the man. In the pocket he always carried the tweed cap that was O’B’s basic item of disguise. Change the shape of the head, change the man. The clear-glass horn-rims had been Giselle’s suggestion. Change the face, change the man.

The two cops emerged, turned his way. He walked ahead of them, slouch-shouldered, taking inches off his height and narrowing his silhouette — Kearny’s contribution to the art. Change the walk, change the man. He listened to them talk.

“So how can you tell if fags are living in a house?”

“The doormat says, ‘Wipe your knees.’ ”

“Jo?”

“Yo.”

And wouldn’t you know it, they chose Ace in the Hole to drink their coffee at, the nondescript all-night Tenderloin coffee shop on Taylor below the Hilton Hotel where Ballard was supposed to meet a nonexistent girl at 3:00 A.M. The jukebox was playing, surprise surprise, “Ace in the Hole”:

Ace in the Hole maybe should have been called Hole in the Wall, since it was a narrow steamy place, the air heavy with hot grease, with a scarred vinyl counter along the left wall as you entered, the stools in ripped red vinyl. Up in front by the window was the grill where the short-order cook, a hulking, remarkably fat man in a chef’s hat and tattoos on both arms, was flipping burgers while draining a fresh basket of fries in a fine show of ambidextrous grace.

Ballard turned in ahead of the cops, they went to a table against the back wall, he chose the seat at the counter, three feet away from them, raised his voice in octave.

“Just coffee for me. I’m expecting a darling friend.”

The cook got the cops’ orders and left. One of them said, “Whadda ya have when you cross a hooker with a pit bull?”

“The last blow job you’ll ever get.”

Terrific. Five hours until 3:00 A.M.; was it going to be five hours of sophomoric humor from two bigoted cops?

At first. But then they finally started kicking around Petrock’s murder.

You’ve kicked it around long enough, Dan Kearny thought, go back to Ballard’s apartment, go to bed. But instead he caught the eye of the petite blonde behind the bar.

“Another Pauli Girl, Beverly.”

She set the icy beaded bottle down in front of him on her way to serve someone else. Working the place alone tonight, though it was crowded because the Giants and the Dodgers were on the Sports Channel in a night game.

Kearny poured beer, fired up another cigarette. Usually, he’d still be at the office, working on billing at an hour when he didn’t have to deal with the distractions of phones and personnel. Had gone there and scared Maybelle out of her wits, so he’d come here, since he couldn’t be home with Jeannie and the kids. Not kids anymore, 20 and 17. And he couldn’t go home to them right now whatever their ages.

His own fault? Maybe.

Married to the job, always working late. Or out of town at a convention where he drank too much and, a time or two, slipped up with some convention floozie. Not for years now, but still...

To hell with it. He could think about it all night, but he would still be sleeping at Ballard’s tiny two-room apartment, and, with O’B out of town, drinking alone.

He stubbed his butt, sipped his beer from the bottle.

Maybe it was even deeper than that. Hard-driving, himself and others. Including Jeannie and the kids. Too hard-driving. The old vicious circle: did you work all the time for your family, or were you doing it for yourself because you loved it, and using the family as an excuse? And the years went by, and suddenly Jeannie had a whole circle of friends he didn’t know. And he was on the outside looking in.

As she’d been from the start with his work at DKA.

He caught his reflection, stared at it solemnly for a moment. Fighting the mirror, the old-timers called it.

Stan Groner. His wife’s friend Karen Marshall. Eddie Graff. Stan hadn’t remembered Karen when she’d hit on them at II Fornaio because, Kearny was sure, she wasn’t a friend of the wife’s and Stan had met her only briefly — if at all — when she’d tried to sell him some insurance. She’d made sure Stan was just attracted enough to her so he’d feel guilty and wouldn’t mention her to the wife. But why?

Maybe she hadn’t been looking for a connection with Stan at all. Maybe she’d been looking for a connection with Dan Kearny.

He straightened up a bit on his stool; so did the man in the mirror. Maybe he was getting a little paranoid here. Time to go home. Er, to Ballard’s apartment.

“Hear you took Larry’s bed away from him,” said Beverly Daniels, snapping him out of his reverie.

“Just for a few nights,” he rumbled.

“ ’Til it gets straightened out at home,” she nodded wisely.

“I’d better have a chat with Larry about his big mouth.”

“You followed him in here, he had to tell me something.”

He nodded, not happy that Larry had told her Kearny’d been tagging around after him because he’d just been kicked out of the house by his wife.

Watching Beverly get him another beer from the cooler, he could see what attracted Larry to her. Petite, great figure, sharply etched features but a great smile, beautiful blond hair, a dancer’s moves. He remembered an old dancer named Chandra, now dead, who’d gotten mixed up with a Mafia don. He’d really liked that old woman, had signed a man’s death warrant because the man had swatted her like a fly. A long time ago.

“Larry said he’s doing some work for you,” he lied when she returned. She fell for it, shrugged ruefully.

“Looking for Danny. My partner. I haven’t seen him in almost a week...”

It all came out: the missing Danny, the dead union guy, Ballard on the hunt. Why did her partner have to pick this week to disappear? DKA short of people, O’B up in Eureka, Heslip on vacation, Giselle and Warren on that Rochemont investigation, or bodyguarding, or whatever the hell the job was...

A lot of weird stuff going down that he didn’t understand.

Yet.