Contract Null & Void

Chapter Ten

He held up his hands, palm out, in the universal gesture of surrender. “Don’t say it,” he said.

Ballard said it. “It was you in the cops’ composite.”

“I cannot tell a lie.”

He grinned his familiar wide white grin. With the bull ring gone from his nose, and the shades from his eyes, if he’d still had his mustache and wasn’t bald as an eight ball, he might have been the old Bart Heslip.

“Since I knocked Petrock on his butt in Queer Street last night, I knew the cops would be going through the ’Loin looking for me — which meant I’d have to keep on truckin’ at Mood Indigo. Didn’t want them to get told by some relief bartender that a guy fit their description hadn’t shown up for work. So I had to be somebody else, quick.” He ran his fingers over his bald head and nude upper lip. “Like the new me?”

Ballard pushed the nose ring away as if it were something dead. “Really cool, man.”

A bulky man in a light tan topcoat and carrying a briefcase knocked at the NO ADMITTANCE door behind the counter. He had eyes like a rivet gun. The door opened, a face peered out, Tan Topcoat was admitted, the door closed.

“And that’s some voice you’ve got to go with it.”

“Yeah. Subtle.” Heslip went into character. “I could of been a contender.” He switched back to his usual voice. “It ain’t easy to do, makes my throat raw.” He vigorously rubbed his nose with a flattened pink palm. “Damn ring drives me wild, too. But it’s a good disguise — then you walk into Mood Indigo right in front of the cops. I was afraid you’d use my name—”

“Hell, I didn’t even recognize you.”

“You didn’t see me moving around. I’d of been a subject, you’d of recognized me right away. Thing is, those same two cops spent a couple hours grilling me when that old dancer, Chandra, got killed in her house on Greenwich Street.”

“That was quite a few years back, Bart.”

“They might be pond scum, but they ain’t dumb.”

“Why were you at Queer Street in the first place? Why are you bartending at Mood Indigo?”

“Cat paid me a lotta money to do both things, Larry. But first you gotta tell me the rap on these cops.”

“I front-tailed them from Mood Indigo — here, as a matter of fact. Sat close enough to listen in as they talked.”

“Maybe they burned you. I mentioned Ace in the Hole—”

“No way. I pretended I was waiting for a boyfriend, it took me right off their radar screens.”

“Blind prejudice do have its uses.” They drank coffee. “So what’s on their narrow minds? How chief a suspect am I?”

“There’re plenty of others,” said Ballard with an optimism he didn’t feel. “During the strike vote in the Executive Council last night, Petrock stuck his big bowie knife in the table six inches from the fingers of the union’s vice-president, Rafael Huezo, who already hated his guts. Petrock also just recently ousted the former president, a hot Italian lady named Amalia Poletti, who is now organizer for the International. He was already feuding with them — and the International isn’t a bunch of pussies. Finally, he was drinking in that gay bar with the secretary-treasurer of the union, a guy named Ray Do...”

“Little guy with a worried face.”

“If you say so. Do was the last guy to officially see him alive, always on Your Hit Parade for the cops. Then there’s the homosexual angle. Petrock is big-balls macho and here he’s so well known in a Polk Gulch gay leather saloon that he’s got his own beer mug hung up over the bar.”

“Not much in that, it’s a culinary workers’ union, lots of gay members whose votes he’d want. Besides, Petrock thought he was a throwback to guys like Harry Bridges.” He sipped his coffee luxuriously — Ballard’s insistence on good coffee was catching. “I’m hearing they’ve got a lot of places to look besides the strikingly handsome guy in that composite.”

Behind Ballard, another bulky man knocked and was admitted through the NO ADMITTANCE door. While also bearing an attorney’s briefcase, he resembled an attorney the way a tarantula resembles a robin’s egg. Ballard looked toward the short-order cook for more coffee, then changed his mind and got up to pour them each a cup from the glass pot on the warmer.

When he came back, Bart said, “What are the cops doing about all those other suspects?”

“Two hours after the shooting they drove over to Oakland and tossed Ray Do out of bed so hard he bounced, but it looks like he’s clean. He was getting a ticket at the Bryant Street on-ramp to the skyway about four minutes after Petrock got shot in Post Street.”

“Mighty convenient, right there by the Hall of Justice.”

“He was driving the wrong kind of car, a beat-up old Chevy. The bartender from Queer Street saw the hit from down the block and said it was either a short limo or a long black sedan. He also said it took off for the Tenderloin.”

Heslip said drily, “Where I’d said I was working. Terrific.”

Another topcoated man with a briefcase was admitted to the NO ADMITTANCE room. His pale expressionless face looked like a plaster cast of a Neanderthal. Ballard swiveled around in his chair to watch him, turned back frowning.

Heslip asked, “How about Huezo?”

“Wide open. The wife was in bed asleep, didn’t know what time he got home. Amalia claims she was shacked up with somebody at the time of the hit, they’ll get around to checking that. They’re also questioning rank-and-file union guys, and ringing doorbells around that Polk-Post corner for eyewitnesses.”

“Lots of luck on that one.”

“Yeah. Amnesia of the eyes. They’re also checking airline passenger lists before and after the time of the murder in case somebody imported a gunman to do it. Trouble is, Bart, nobody liked Petrock and anybody could have hired somebody to ice him.”

“Somebody from his union, maybe. Unions always have a lot of tough-guy members looking for extra bread.”

“Bringing the cops back to the guy in the composite — he admitted he was a bartender. Nonunion, but even so...”

They both glanced around as yet another ape-man went through the disguised vault door behind the counter.

“That’s four in, nobody out,” said Ballard. “They got a poker game running back there?”

Bart leaned his shiny dome closer, elbows on the table, the bunched heavy muscles of his upper arms straining the sleeves of his shirt.

“They got a sure thing running back there. That looks like a standard wooden door, but it’s a steel bank vault door with a birch veneer. Behind it the head bookkeeper for Griffin Paris counts the take until six every morning except for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter.”

“Griffin Paris? I’ve never seen the guy, but I hear he’s into liquor, drugs, pinball, prostitution — anything to do with vice and dope in the Tenderloin.”

“You hear right, bro — he owns this place, probably Mood Indigo, too — leastwise he’s always droppin’ by there. Man’s got twenty-some indictments, zero convictions — he goes to his pocket real good. So many defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges got their hands out that he’s never even been in court.”

Ballard mused, “The bars feed porno houses feed dirty bookstores feed street hookers feed massage parlors feed gambling houses feed payoffs. All spokes of the wheel—”

“With Griffin Paris as the hub.”

The T-shirted cook appeared at their table. His face looked as if it had been run over by a truck, with his nose to one side to sniff out opportunity, one eye cocked off the other way to see what he’d gotten away with. He was easily six and a half feet tall, but even towering over Heslip he was not able to make the smaller man look frail.

He smirked at their coffee cups. “I think you’ve had enough, gents. If you was driving I’d have to take your keys.”

Ballard said, “You wanna try to take mine?”

“Why you so innerested in that door behind the counter?”

“I’m interested in breakfast,” said Heslip. “Three eggs over easy, bacon, two English muffins, half a quart of orange juice, coffee and leave the pot for my friend here.”

The big man considered them for a long moment, or at least one of his eyes did; the other seemed to be considering his cooking range. Finally he gave a rumbling chuckle.

“Over easy it is.”

“And cream with that coffee,” said Heslip. To Ballard he said, “You get all that stuff about Petrock’s murder just from listening to those cops kick the case around?”

“Naw, I’ve been poking around at Petrock’s union hall. Danny is a member of their Executive Council, and Danny’s missing. Bev asked me to find him.”

“Missing?” Heslip’s eyes flashed angrily. “Damn it all anyway! Danny’s the guy got me into this mess.”

“How do you mean?”

“He lined me up with the guy hired me.” Seeing the look on Larry’s face, he added, “He couldn’t go to you, man. You’re too tight with Bev. He was afraid she’d get out of you what was going on. This had to be buried deep, deep, deep.”

Ballard leaned back so his chair was balanced on its two hind legs. “So somebody put you into Mood Indigo undercover. Why’d you take the gig instead of your vacation with Corinne?”

“The man was shoving a lotta bread my way, so Corinne and I talked it over — we wanta buy into the travel agency where she works. I can always visit her folks in Detroit City.”

“A lotta bread for bartending in the ’Loin?” asked Ballard in an unbelieving voice.

“Course not. For being a real undercover private eye like the Great White Father is always sayin’ he wants DKA to get involved in, but never does. The man told me he thought something big and rotten and financial was going down at Local Three. Powerful people involved. He wanted to know who — and I guess he thought maybe Mood Indigo was the place to find out.”

“Is it?”

“You saw the joint — nothing’s happening there. For all I know he has a dozen guys like me spread around the Tenderloin.”

The cook, smelling of hot bacon fat, brought plates balanced up and down both hairy arms, slid them to the table with practiced ease. Up close they could see a dozen prison tattoos on one arm going up under the shoulder of his T-shirt. He winked at them and left. Heslip started to eat, Ballard poured coffee.

“Have you heard from this guy since Petrock got aced?”

“No. But I can’t quit just yet.”

“Why not? He hired you to go undercover, right?”

“Right.”

“He hired you to punch out Petrock, right?”

“Right.”

“Then he was just setting you up for Petrock’s murder.”

“No he wasn’t.”

“How can you say that?” demanded Ballard.

“Because,” said Heslip as he popped the whole wiggly egg yolk balanced on his fork right into his mouth, “he was Petrock.”