Contract Null & Void

Chapter Fifteen

Twenty minutes later, they were back at Yew Wood Court. In the center of Lincoln a uniformed San Rafael cop was directing traffic. Kearny looked quickly over his shoulder at Paul.

“Nothing about the guy trying to run us down, okay?”

Paul said, “Yeah, sure, I ain’t no squealer, see.”

Kearny stopped his car and stuck his head out the open window at the cop. Who said, curtly, “Move along.”

“Chief Rowan wants to see us.”

Kearny stopped the car in midblock; they got out. Yew Wood Court had been transformed from a quiet half-block dead end into a crime scene. Yellow tapes were up, and a dark armored vehicle used by Marin County’s bomb squad was parked beside the burned-out Mercedes.

“Why did you leave this crime scene? You’re an experienced investigator, you know that—”

“We were afraid the guy might make another try, and Paul was shaken up. We wanted to let him calm down.”

Rowan took in Paul’s pale face, bedraggled appearance, and wet clothes. He was fighting a vindictive grin as he turned and pointed to the last house on the left-hand side of the street.

“Second-floor apartment, faces the street,” he said. Uniformed men were moving behind the window. “Let’s go up.”

It was really just a furnished room; the couch opened out into a bed, there was a kitchen alcove with a hot plate and a lime-streaked porcelain sink with a wooden drainboard and two drawers under it for silverware. Lingering in the air was the smell of popcorn. On a table in front of the main room’s open window was an electronic black box and an ashtray full of butts.

“That’s the radio transmitter that was used to blow up the Mercedes,” said Rowan. “C-4 plastique with a pencil detonator embedded in it. San Rafael police tell me one of the cigarettes in the ashtray was still smoldering when they broke in.”

Paul suddenly came to life again. His Bogart voice grated, from The Maltese Falcon, “Oh, and I’ve got an exhibit: this black statuette here that all the fuss was about...”

“I could really get to not like this guy.”

“He’s still in shock,” said Giselle.

“He grows on you,” said Kearny.

“The window looks down on the remains of the Mercedes.”

Kearny said thoughtfully, frowning, “Sits here chain-smoking, blows the car just a few seconds too late, right?” He swung around to Rowan. “Who was the room registered to?”

“Who else? Our elusive Mr. Frank Nugent — just this morning, as a matter of fact.”

Just then Inga burst into the crowded little room and threw herself into Paul’s arms.

“My darling!” she cried. “Are you all right?”

“Gimme a break,” muttered Giselle.

Inga was disentangling herself from Paul, who had lipstick and a goofy grin smeared on his face.

Rowan said tactfully, “Uh, Mrs. Rochemont... um, you just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

Giselle began, “As a matter of fact, I was—” when she caught Kearny’s eye and shut up. Now what was he playing at?

“Ms. Marc?” prompted Rowan.

“Sorry. I was confused, I thought you were talking to me.”

“You? Confused? I doubt that.”

Giselle met his gaze as serenely as a cat on top of a warm TV cable box, so he gave a curt nod and turned back to Inga. Who seemed to have been waiting to be surprised by his question.

“Why, Paul told me at the police station that he was going to pick up his car. I went shopping, then I called the Mercedes thingy to see if he had gotten it yet — I thought it would be sweet if we could meet for lunch.” She cast an adoring look at Paul, who responded with Pavlovian delight. They were two different people without his mother around. “They said he had been there and had come to this address. But when I got here, my poor darling...”

And she was in his arms again. Giselle caught Kearny’s eye and pantomimed a finger down her throat. He frowned slightly, let his eyes rest on Paul and then on the door.

Meaning, time to collect their client and get out of there.

Ballard knew it was past time that he should go shake down Danny’s apartment, but when he left the union headquarters he found himself driving up Leavenworth to one-way inbound Clay, where he took a right toward Nob Hill. He was lucky enough to find one-hour street parking about four blocks from the St. Mark in an upscale neighborhood of narrow older apartment houses.

Grace Cathedral, with its recent face-lift, gleamed in the afternoon sun. The Fairmont had all its flags flying and looked smug. It had signed with the union. It was busy.

The St. Mark, across California from the Fairmont, was not. Half a hundred pickets circled in front of the grand old hotel, not quite blocking its circular driveway, carrying signs.

Some taxis were trying to nose their way through the noisy but essentially peaceful throng; others were turning away. There was a steady buzz of conversation, some laughter. Once in a while a voice was raised in anger. A chant started.

“Check out now! Check out now!”

Ballard stood on the sidewalk scanning the pickets and he saw Amalia, wearing slacks and her windbreaker and a soft fuzzy-looking beret tipped fetchingly down above one eye. She looked dedicated. Ballard moved on to a grizzled cop who surely had his thirty in, and was watching the proceedings benignly, with his hands clasped behind his back, teetering up on his heels and then back down like a schoolteacher watching the students at recess. There was dried mustard on one lapel of his blue uniform jacket.

“You see who has the picket signs?” Ballard asked.

“There’s a guy with a stack of them in his trunk parked up on the corner of Jones.”

“That’s all red zone up there, isn’t it?” asked Ballard.

The cop looked him over and grinned. “So sue me. My old man was a longshoreman. He always said unless you went out on strike, management would piss in your beer every time.”

Ballard found the guy with the signs. He gave Ballard one.

“You’re late,” he said.

“My old lady is sick.”

“You’re still late.” The sign man was heavyset, wearing a W.C. Fields nose and the rosy capillary bloom of a heavy drinker. Ballard couldn’t help thinking of O’B. “Go and sign in with the strike captain.”

“I already did.”

Waving his picket sign around enthusiastically, Ballard found his way to Amalia, fell in beside her.

“I thought of being a scab, but I was afraid you’d hit me with a picket sign.”

She looked over at him and burst out laughing. “I would have.” They walked. “What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Sebastian back at the local says you’re supposed to be at your desk right now.”

“Mr. Sebastian is an asshole. That’s a-s-s-h-o—”

“I knew we saw things the same way.”

They walked.

“All right, then,” said Amalia suddenly. “You’ve found out my deep dark secret. I’m out here because I believe in all this bullshit. All of it. Trade union strikes, living wage for the workingman, bennies for the union rank and file—”

“Bennies?”

“Benefits.” She slanted a look over at him. She found it companionable walking side by side with Ballard among the throng. “Health and welfare insurance. Pregnancy leaves. Employer-paid day-care centers. Pension and profit sharing.”

“How’s it going?”

“Today the good guys are winning one. In the past week we’ve settled with fourteen other hotels...” She pointed across California. “Including the Fairmont and Stanford Court just down the street. Five years. More pay. Greatly expanded benefits. Job protection. And a cooperative grievance procedure.”

“Commonism!” barked Ballard in a trailer trash voice.

“Why, you’re a goddam fascist!”

Ballard raised his voice to join in the chant.

“Check out now! Check out now!”

Amalia started to giggle; it was quite startling from such a sternly beautiful woman. “But you’re my fascist,” she said.

They kept walking. Ballard felt remarkably at peace, close to Amalia in body and spirit. He considered taking her free hand with his free hand but decided it probably would be a bad move. He was right. She was preaching in ringing tones.

“What we really object to is that the St. Mark wants to start paying a lot of our workers by the hour instead of by the shift as we have it now.”

Although he considered the labor union movement to be, frankly speaking, a handful of flea dirt, if somebody like Amalia found it compelling he was perfectly willing to be influenced. But would she want a doormat for a lover? Of course not.

“You mean that now your people get paid for a whole shift even if they only work part of it.”

“That’s right, and we want to keep it that way.”

“Is that fair to management? They’re paying for something they aren’t getting—”

“Now you’re the one being the asshole,” she said.

“But I’m your—”

“Shut up.” She looked at her watch. “I really should get back to the union to check out my messages. Do you have a car?”

“Four blocks away.”

“I walked up from headquarters.”

She took the sign from his hand, gave both of them to a pudgy black girl who was walking beside them with a contemplative look on her face, obviously far away and in another galaxy.

“Sally, will you turn these in for us?”

“Huh?” The girl whirled to face them, startled. Then she broke out in a big grin. “Oh. Sure, Amy.” Then, as if recalled to her duties, she raised her voice to the common chant.

“Check out now! Check out now!”

Ballard stopped dead in the midst of the pickets. “Wait a sec, I want to remember this moment, forever, just as it is.”

Amalia was laughing again. “Fool!” she exclaimed.

Morales had parked in one of the lots up on Broadway’s nightlife strip; he was standing on the corner of Pacific and Montgomery, cattycorner across the street from Rick Kiely’s law offices, wondering if he was stupid to be there.

Ballard’s asshole buddy Sebastian had been a real bastard. When Trin had mentioned his pal Larry Ballard who’d just been there, Sebastian had started to call the cops and Morales had been forced to flee. He owed Ballard one, all right. And eventually he’d figure out how to give it to him. Meanwhile, here he was outside Kiely’s door without ammunition.

He realized that his palms were sweaty and his collar was too tight even though his tie was pulled down two inches from his thick brown throat. That night in the limo, Kiely must have impressed him more than he wanted to admit. Or maybe what had impressed him was the speed with which Petlaroc had been dispatched once the maid had told Kiely about Morales.

To hell with this crap. Trin Morales wasn’t going to let some gringo attorney face him down. He looked both ways, then danced around and through the oncoming traffic against the WAIT on surprisingly quick, light feet.

Rick Kiely’s law offices were in the ground floor of a building that bore his name. It was tricked out with reused brick, broadleaf shiny green plants, a recessed entryway, gaslights on sconces flanking the doorway. The trim around the doors and windows was black, the lettering

genuine gold-antiqued in the style of a post-gold rush Gay ’90s saloon. The windows were inset, with decorative black wooden slat shutters laid back against the walls on either side of each.

Looking inside was like looking into the movie set of an old-style attorney’s office from the turn of the century. Receptionist, secretaries, and minor associates worked at open desks so they could be seen by passersby. This late in the day the receptionist was the only one still there.

The door had an antique bell on a strap of spring steel that tinkled merrily when Morales opened it. Inside were antique hardwood furniture, a thick wine-colored carpet, stuffed chairs with burgundy upholstery. From floor to ceiling on the back wall, inlaid hardwood bookcases crammed in artful disarray with lawbooks bound in leather and finished in gold.

The receptionist, elegant as the room but definitely no antique, had a spring mist of ash-blond hair around her exquisitely chiseled face. She glanced at an old grandfather case clock in the corner, its pendulum slowly ticking off 5:03 on its Roman numerals. She wore a pearl-gray silk suit that would have cost Morales three months rent if he’d wanted to give it to her as a present. Not that he would ever want to give any chica anything except seven stiff inches.

She smiled warmly at him. Class. Real class. If he could ever get something like that into bed... Well, hell, that’s why he was trying to be a player, wasn’t it?

“Yes sir, may I help you?”

He tossed one of his DKA cards on the desk in front of her with a contemptuous flick of the wrist. He had no cards of his own; this was preprinted with the firm name and address, and had Trinidad Morales as an afterthought in the lower left corner.

“I’m here to repo Kiely’s limo,” he said in his breathy, intrusive voice. Then he opened his gold-glinting mouth wide and guffawed to show her it was a joke.

She was looking at the card without touching it, as if it were something nasty that Morales had done on her blotter. “Daniel Kearny Associates,” she said flatly. “Who are they — the only people who will associate with Daniel Kearny?”

“Kiely wants to see me. He knows what it’s about.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Kiely is in Sacramento. The legislature is in session and he—”

Morales cut her short with another guffaw. He didn’t know if the legislature was in session or not, but it stood to reason that this soon after having Petlaroc murdered, Kiely would still be around San Francisco for possible damage control.

“Do I look like I just got off the bus from Tijuana?”

“I see,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Na.” He plopped down on the burgundy couch. “Better take it in to him, sweetlips. He’ll be pissed if you don’t.”

She pushed a button on her switchboard and leaned slightly forward and spoke into her mouthpiece with inaudible tones. Then, with a cold glance at him, she rolled her chair back and got up with a flash of very long legs under a very short skirt. She opened a heavy, ornate hardwood door at the back of the office, went through it, and pulled it carefully shut behind her.

He’d like to snoop a couple of these desks, probably some juicy stuff in them that a man could turn to his advantage, but he figured that Kiely was sitting there in his back room right now, watching him on closed-circuit surveillance video.

So he just sat there and waited. There was nothing else he could do, now. Even if he left, Kiely would know he had been there and had been pushing it. And a guy like Kiely would always know where to find a guy like Morales.

“Big and wide, but he still looks squat?” asked Kiely from behind his huge hardwood desk. It was littered with files; today he was trying to convince himself he was a working attorney.

The blond receptionist nodded. “And with an insinuating manner as if he knows what color underwear I have on.”

“Yeah, that’s Morales, all right,” chuckled Kiely. “I’ve got to admit he’s got more balls than I gave him credit for. He might even be smarter than I thought. Let him stew for half an hour or so.” Kiely picked up his brief. “Thanks, Maddy. Can I impose on you to stay to show him in?”

“Surely.”

“I owe you dinner at Postrio’s.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Give Herb Caen something to write about. ‘What prominent assemblyman was seen by the Shadow having dinner with which beautiful blond assistant at Postrio’s?’ ” When she chuckled with him, he added, “Better get out there, make sure our brown-skinned boyo doesn’t steal the silver or a couple of files. I first ran across him when he was trying to burgle my house.”

Maddy chuckled again, dutifully. She thought the boss was making a joke as he so often did.