Contract Null & Void

Chapter Sixteen

Ballard unlocked and opened the car, she got in, suddenly yawned involuntarily. She looked tired, but was high on the union movement. He got in under the wheel and started it.

“Another late night?”

“ ’Til damn near dawn,” she said. “The strikers are supposed to do six hours in what would have been their normal work shift, and we get ninety-five percent of them on the line. On the day shift you’ve got the room cleaners, the bellmen, food servers, cooks and telephone switchboard operators, on the night shift the nighttime cocktail servers and bartenders and graveyard bellmen. But from two to six A.M. the only people working are the night porters who clean the kitchen. So I did a midnight-to-eight stint with them, and boy, is it cold out there!”

“Why you? You’re union brass, you don’t have to—”

“Sure I do. Solidarity. And we’re killing the St. Mark!” She sparkled with Garibaldi fervor. “Local Seventeen of the Service Employees International, who just signed with the St. Mark last week are honoring our picket lines. So are the electricians and plumbers.”

“But even after being there all night you—”

“I told you I buy into all this bullshit. Look around you. Women getting sick working murderous split shifts. Employers hiring people for thirty-eight hours a week so they don’t have to pay bennies, putting four out of five employees on the street so they can work the fifth to death doing the work of five.”

Ballard pulled away from the curb. “You believe all that stuff?”

“It’s the truth, I see it every day,” she snapped at him, eyes flashing. “I think you’re going to see a union comeback if for no other reason than we need people coming at problems from all different angles. The unions have only half the workforce now, but workers are going to start forming their own grassroots organizations just like in the old days that will become unions eventually. That’s why we have to win at the St. Mark — to show it can be done.”

“I think that if the unions have lost ground, it’s because of corruption,” said Ballard. He had come down Hyde and was looking for parking not too far from the union hall. “In the unions themselves, among the politicians. You said it yourself, John Burton and what’s-his-face, the big gun in the Assembly—”

“Rick Kiely. They’re not corrupt.” She got a surprised look on her face. “At least I don’t think they are. Anyway, what you’re looking for is somebody raiding our general fund or going after the benefit funds. And we’ve been over all that. They’re so closely monitored that even if you could embezzle a lot of bucks, you wouldn’t get away with it for very long.”

He found a space that wasn’t tow-away, killed the engine.

“Why are you parking here? You can just drop me off.”

“I thought we could get a pizza or something afterwards.”

“That’s the only reason you want to come in with me?”

They got out of the car, locked the doors. “Maybe I thought that as long as we were there, you might be able to take a quick peek in Danny’s file and see if there was anything that might help us find... what’s the matter?”

“A detective!” she exclaimed.

“Where?” He was looking around, clowning it up.

“You’re a goddamned private eye! You’re too focused and too good at looking for Danny to be anything else.”

“Or maybe I’m a cop,” he suggested.

“You wouldn’t last five minutes. Cops got to knuckle under to the chain of command.”

Ballard took it as a compliment. So he had to be damned sure to never knuckle under to her.

“So I’m a detective. But I’m also a friend of Danny’s—”

“And a friend of Beverly’s? Maybe a hell of a lot more than a friend?”

“Yeah — once. But now...”

“For now Amalia will have to do, huh?”

They were at the side door on Golden Gate. “Jesus, women!” He waved an exasperated hand. “Amalia, I’ll see you around—”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you, it’s just that—”

He put his arms around her and kissed her, right there on the street. After a long moment, she halfheartedly pushed him away and fished in her purse for her keys. They went into the littered hallway with the kicked-in plasterboard walls.

“Major renovation or just a pissed-off union member?”

“We’re an emotional lot. Actually, we have hopes of tearing the whole place down, so we’ve let it slip a little. The property’s zoned for eight stories commercial, so our idea is to put up an eight-story building — ground-floor stores and shops, second floor our union hall, the top six floors affordable housing for the aged. It would upgrade the neighborhood and—”

“Without money, how can you afford to tear it down?”

“It wouldn’t cost us a dime. We bought when prices were cheap and unions were flush. We’d put up the land, the money would be federal and state and local from various start-up and rebuilding and development funds.” She went over to her littered table with its battered plug-in pot. “You want some coffee?”

“Out of that thing? No.”

“That’s right, you’re the coffee freak.” She got an almost urchin look on her fine Italian face. “You stay here and I’ll go steal Jacques Daniel Marenne’s personnel file for us.”

Twenty minutes later, just as Ballard was admitting there was nothing in the file that he didn’t already know about Danny, the door flew open hard enough to bang against the wall and Sebastian stormed in.

“My God, it’s Inspector Clouseau!” cried Ballard.

Sebastian shrilled vindictively to Amalia, “Those personnel files are confidential. This is grounds for dismissal.”

“You’re welcome to try, hotshot,” she snapped.

“That’s just what I’ll do.” Sebastian snatched up Marenne’s personnel file and stormed out triumphantly.

“He ever come on to you?” Ballard asked.

“Often. I’d sooner go out with a toad.”

“That explains it. He really hates your guts.”

“I can live with that.”

“If he’ll let you. Can he get you in trouble over this?”

“Did you tell him your name this afternoon?”

Ballard shook his head. They were going down the hall toward the front of the building. She gave a low chuckle.

“Then I’ll just say you were from the Department of Labor or the National Labor Relations Board. Sebastian is scared shit of the federal regulators.”

In the otherwise deserted front office, Sebastian was behind his window huddled over his telephone, talking in rapid low tones, following their passage with enraged pig’s eyes.

“Who do you suppose he’s calling?” asked Ballard.

“Probably his mommy,” said Amalia.

Rick Kiely thanked his caller and hung up. Problems, always problems. And tomorrow he had to go up to Sacramento for a floor vote. It would be close; the Republicans had their majority right now, which made it tougher to sweet-talk those on the fringes into lining up with the Democrats. With Willie Brown gone from the speakership to become San Francisco’s mayor, they were looking more and more to Kiely to fill the gap.

Maybe he’d mishandled Morales in the limo that night; having the man show up at his office suggested that he had. A surprise, not a pleasant one. What did Morales know? What did he think he knew?

He flicked the intercom toggle. “Send him in, Maddy.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Kiely.”

“And then just lock up and go home. Or better yet, get yourself a good dinner on the corporate card. And I’ll still owe you one at Postrio’s.”

“I’ve got class tonight, but thanks for the offer.”

Maddy was in night school, boning up for the California bar. The door opened and Morales shambled in. Lazy-looking Mexican, except the eyes noted everything in the place, weighed its value, estimated its importance.

Yes, quite surely he had underestimated Mr. Morales.

Kiely came out from behind the desk. He offered a hand. Morales took it. His small soft-looking brown fingers had a surprising strength.

“What’s your pleasure?”

“Whatever you’re having,” said Morales breathily.

Giving nothing away. Kiely went to the antique oak sideboard with sliding ornately carved doors and modern wet bar.

“Twelve-year-old Bushmill’s, then.”

“Irish whiskey,” said Morales. He sat down in a cherrywood and leather chair across the desk from Kiely’s massive swivel; it creaked with his bulk. “O’B oughtta be here — likes his Irish.”

Kiely was tonging ice cubes, pouring Irish liquor. He added no water, no mix. Bushmill’s was a drink-alone. The ice was his only compromise to his American birth.

“The redheaded Irishman you work with at the repo agency?”

Morales merely nodded, looking around the room as if against the day when he got one like it. Or maybe this one. He accepted the cold drink that Kiely handed him on the way back behind the bastion of his desk.

“May you be in hiven an hour before the divil blows his icy breath up your ass. Or something,” said Morales.

Kiely laughed aloud. They drank. Kiely said, “You’re quite a lad, aren’t you, boyo?”

“For a greaser.”

Surprised again. This was no wetback; strictly home brew out of the Mission’s teeming streets. The business that had brought Morales here wasn’t the sort of thing that Kiely enjoyed. But he did what was necessary. He did the hard thing.

“So why did you drop around, Mr. Morales? To try and date Maddy? I think she’d be a tougher proposition than my maid.”

“The maid was tough enough. But neither one of ’em’s why I came, Mr. Kiely.” Kiely merely nodded, a pleasantly attentive look on his lived-in face. “I... know who hired me to take a peek around your house. I know what he was after.” He paused. “I know what happened to him because of it. I know you wanted something on me so you could pressure me into being backup in case... nothing had happened to him the first time.”

“Know? Or think you know?”

“From your viewpoint, what’s the difference?”

“There’s that.” Kiely leaned back thoughtfully. “You have some facts to go with all these ‘I knows’?”

“You’re chief counsel for Local Three — donate your time because you came out of the old bartenders’ union and you can afford the gesture and it’s good public relations. Petlaroc was president of Local Three, and there was plenty of conflict between you two in almost every committee meeting.”

“You have been busy.”

“Public records, if you know where to look. Guys in my line of work know where to look.”

“Are you saying I had a hand in Petlaroc’s death?”

“Just saying I know... know... certain things...”

“And out of this you want... certain things?” He made a circular gesture with one hand. “Fast cars? Yachts?”

“Something like your Maddy out there?” Morales made his rising inflection very close to Kiely’s melodic tenor. He shifted in his chair. “Naw, none of those things, Mr. Kiely.”

Not in this office, thought Kiely, where I could have a tape running. “Money, then?”

“Money. But as a paycheck. A big paycheck, but — still a legit paycheck.” He shrugged. “Head of security. Troubleshooter when you get to be Speaker of the Assembly... On the payroll big-time. I’ll give you lots of bang for your buck.”

Kiely got to his feet, began to prowl the room. Not could give you lots of bang, will.

“You think you can make this stick?”

“I’m givin’ it a shot, yeah.”

Kiely said, almost as if to himself, “Somebody once wrote there is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican.” He slanted a look over at Morales in the big leather chair. “Are you a tough Mexican, Morales?”

“Try and stiff me, Kiely, you’ll find out how tough.”

Kiely went to the door and opened it. “It’s been interesting. I’ll be in touch.”

He stood aside as Morales put his glass down deliberately on the polished hardwood of the desktop, then slouched past him to the outer office. Neither man offered to shake hands.

Kiely killed the alarm to let him out through the locked front door, reset it, went back into his private office and, almost absently, picked up the glass Morales had left behind, set it on the blotter so it would do no further harm to the finish.

“So he’s a dangerous man on the edge of stupidity,” he said aloud. “Which makes him just about twice as dangerous as someone really bright.”

The Petrock problem, for good or ill, was gone. The Danny Marenne problem remained. The Morales problem, mainly because of Marenne, was growing. He knew what had to be done. It paid to have cultivated ties with certain of the Local 3 officials.

Kiely tapped out a number on the phone. Through his window he could see sunset-stained clouds up over the city. While it was ringing, he brightened. An end run when they were expecting a plunge up the middle.

He said into the picked-up phone, “I maybe have a job of work for one of those nasty lads of yours. Piece work...” He listened. “Somebody... new. Without any... associations that could be traced should anything go awry. I can’t afford to appear in this in any way whatsoever...”

As he talked and listened, his troubled eyes had strayed once again to the light show still visible through his window.

Sunrises. Sunsets. Beginnings.

Endings.