Contract Null & Void

Chapter Twenty-two

Ballard almost made it. He’d picked up his new assignments from his In box, he’d stapled all his copies of the memos on his various files onto the back of the case sheets he carried with him in his car folder, he’d made a few phone calls and used their results as if they had been fieldwork to dummy up four reports on cases where the clients were screaming for action.

He slunk down the back stairs and out past the Great White Father’s vacant desk. But just when he was starting out the big overhead door from the storage lot toward his car street-parked on Eleventh, he came face-to-face with Kearny.

“Reports are on Jane’s desk, Dan,” said Ballard quickly.

Kearny had been case-hardened by years of verbal battles with O’B over everything imaginable; Ballard wasn’t about to put anything over on him.

“There are three new assignments in your In box—”

“Going out on them now, Dan.” Larry patted his briefcase.

“And what about Danny Marenne?”

“I haven’t been able to...” Hey, Kearny wasn’t supposed to know about the Danny hunt! “I... ah... just spare time...”

“Well goddammit, get on it! Bev is worried sick.”

That stopped Ballard in midstride. How did Kearny know Beverly’s state of mind? At least, if he was yakking about field reports, he didn’t know about Bart Heslip. So offense was the best defense.

“Ah, Dan, could you, ah, anymore could you not do whatever it is you do in my coffeepot? I like to make only coffee in—”

Kearny uttered two rude one-syllable words and turned away. Ballard was sounding more and more like O’B every day. Which, the Great White Father reflected, probably meant he had turned into a pretty damned good investigator over the years.

The drive out to John Little’s house in the tall redwoods didn’t seem so long to O’B this time. The sheer falls didn’t seem so sheer, the deep shadows under the trees not quite so deep. Well, the day was yet young, and he wasn’t hung over.

O’B turned the company car in at the rutted dirt driveway, parked where the longbed had been the night before. He switched off the engine. The evergreen silence closed in around him.

Not silence at all, really. The kweee-e-e of a distant hawk. The chittering of a chipmunk under the house. The soughing of the wind bending the flexible tops of the trees. But you heard these sounds in a different way from man-made sounds. These were woven into the overall fabric of the forest, they blended into an impression of silence.

O’B got out of the car, slammed his door deliberately to break the spell, walked around to the front door. The rocking chair was empty. The porch creaked underfoot. O’B cupped his hands to peer in the window in the top half of the door.

John Little was sitting in an easy chair in front of the TV, his booted feet up on a stool, his guitar resting in his lap, his big clever hands moving on the strings. A half-empty whiskey bottle was balanced on one arm of the chair.

An ancient rerun of Hee Haw was on, Buck Owens and Roy Clark astrummin’ an’ ahollerin’, Hee-e-e-e Haw-w-w-w, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck. He opened the door and went on in.

John Little was playing along with the guitarmen; his riffs sounded better than theirs. He reached for his bottle.

“Afternoon,” said O’B.

Little turned to look over his shoulder at O’B.

“No shit,” he said.

On the TV Minnie Pearl’s hat had a price tag hanging down in front of one eye and she was saying something that was making the studio audience laugh. Little punched the remote, killing the set. He was nicely loaded again. Three-day drunk? Or a permanent state? Or becoming one?

“Guess you made it back to town all right.”

“Guess so. Thanks.” O’B sat down on the couch under the front window. He wasn’t happy about why he was there. He cleared his throat. “Ah, Mr. Little...”

John Little sighed. He pointed the remote at the TV in interrogation. O’B nodded. Little nodded and sighed again and got to his feet. The man could hold his booze; there was not the slightest unsteadiness in his movements.

“I’ll help you load her up.”

“Thanks,” said O’B. He also stood. “Ah... the VCR, too.”

“Sure. That figures. My wife bought the whole shebang at a mall in Eureka four months ago. Couldn’t make but the first payment, then...” He shrugged, unplugging the TV and VCR from the surge protector against the wall. “Got lonely for her out here in the boonies. She was used to the bright lights and big city. Never should of married a old hound dog like me.”

Karen Marshall’s home address wasn’t listed. Marshall and Associates, Insurance Brokers, All Lines, had two rooms on the fifth floor of 114 Sansome, a narrow stone building just above Bush Street. Kearny went on up.

Two women were in the outer office, which had old hardwood furniture, metal filing cabinets, dusty windows with underwatered potted plants on them. One was short and snappy-eyed, the other big and wide and placid, graying, with large-lensed glasses that distorted her eyes. Neither would see 50 again, neither seemed to give a damn. Short and Snappy in slacks and sweater, Wide and Placid in print dress and Supp-hose thick as plaster casts.

Kearny had put on his recently acquired reading glasses before entering. His sagging shoulders were hunched slightly forward. He shoved the glasses down on his nose and regarded the two women from above the frame, looking from one to the other with his mouth open just a bit and his voice creaking a little.

“Ms. Marshall. Hmm?”

“Not in,” said Short and Snappy. “She called in sick.”

“Oh dear.”

“Did you have an appointment?” Wide and Placid. “There was nothing on her calendar.”

Both smart cookies. He had been hoping for an airhead whose Rolodex or computer he’d be able to get at, but Karen Marshall obviously looked for tougher fiber in her employees.

“She called me. Hmm?” Kearny raised his briefcase slightly. “Papers. Legal papers.”

“You’re an attorney, Mr.—”

“Tut tut. Ms. Marshall only.” He shrugged his shoulders as if they were delicate, started to turn away slowly. “She called me, she will be disappointed.” He turned slowly back. “And I believe perhaps legally inconvenienced—”

“You’re her attorney?” asked Wide and Placid too casually.

“Dearie me no! I represent...” He paused delicately. “Interests...”

“Adverse interests?”

The glasses were down on the nose again. “Hmm.”

“I know most of the firm’s legal involvements,” said Short and Snappy. “I’ve worked here nearly thirty years.”

Terrific. “Tut tut, Ms. Marshall can’t be over—”

“For her father until two years ago.”

“Her father’s dead,” said Kearny, taking a chance and making it sound like a revelation. “Ms. Marshall most distinctly said to bring the papers.”

Short and Snappy sighed.

“If she’s home, her machine is on and she’s not picking up.”

The character Kearny was sketching would almost have stamped his foot. He didn’t quite. “She said here.” He tapped the face of his watch. “Now. My time is—”

“You could leave the papers—”

“No!” He clutched the briefcase to his chest as if it was 1944 and the briefcase contained a schematic from Los Alamos of the Fat Man Bomb. “Into her hands only. Only here.”

Wide and Placid said hesitantly, “If you could take the extra time to take the papers by her apartment...”

Kearny snapped a cuff, suddenly brusque as fusty men can be brusque, checked his watch, shoved his glasses back up.

“I rarely make myself late. You may tell Ms. Marshall that I am disappointed. Most disappointed.”

He started for the door with vigor, then suddenly stopped and turned again. He tried to make his face look like the face of an unpleasant man trying to look pleasant.

“Oh, very well.” He made squiggly, almost imperious motions with a forefinger pointed like a pen. “Her address. But I will bill my hours accordingly, you may be sure of that, young lady.” Then he added, as she bent over her desk to write with a real ink pen, “Hmmm?”

As the blond waitress bent over their table to pour more coffee, Rosenkrantz looked down the front of her blouse and said, “What does a blonde say after sex?”

“Thanks, guys,” said the waitress, and went about laughing.

“What goes tap-tap-tap-tap BOOM?” It wasn’t Rosenkrantz’s day. He didn’t know. “A blind man in a minefield,” said Guildenstern, and gave one of his rare chuckles.

They drank coffee, dunked doughnuts — to hell with the stereotype. Both men had their suit coats hanging over their chairs; it was a cop’s greasy spoon a block from the Hall, guys with guns and cuffs and speedloaders on their belts were no novelty. Both men by chance wore a pale blue shirt today; it was always by chance, but they always ended up color-coordinated.

“So whadda we got?”

In San Francisco, homicide teams are on call a week at a time — maybe one week out of five or six — and during that week they catch all the homicides and suspicious deaths that come in, so the two bulky homicide cops had plenty on their plates. But since Petrock was the one drawing political heat, they had spent most of their time thinking about it.

“Shit sandwich. Can’t find the Icelander in the ’Loin.”

“We only got his secondhand word that he was ever there.”

“But Ray Do is out of it so why would he lie?”

“Huezo isn’t out of it. His wife’s a heavy sleeper. On the other hand, Huezo’s awful damned obvious for it.”

“Yeah. But we haven’t been able to find any heavy hitters in or out from back east within the time frame.”

“What about the Italian woman? Pelotti?”

“Pullin’ a one-nighter with that out-of-work bartender.”

“Who we ain’t talked to yet.”

Rosenkrantz said, “Yeah, convenient-like, ain’t it, he goes down to L.A. yesterday to interview for a job.”

“Only she can’t remember where.”

“Man did take the presidency away from her.”

Guildenstern waggled the hand that didn’t have a doughnut in it. “Hot-blooded Italian lady...”

“Why’d God invent vino?” interrupted Rosenkrantz.

“So Italian women could get laid,” said the waitress, back with the coffeepot.

“What do blondes and turtles have in common?”

She made her eyes big and round and mock dumb. “What?”

“Get ’em on their backs, they’re both screwed.”

She went away laughing, Rosenkrantz leaned forward across the table again. “There’s that little French guy with the funny name, missed the council meeting, nobody’s seen him since.”

“Jacques Daniel Marenne.”

“Yeah. Him. We haven’t talked to his partner yet.”

“And he was missing a couple-three days before Petrock was whacked.”

“So maybe he was whacked, too.”

“So maybe you know why?” No response. He nodded. “Thought so. How do you teach a dog to fetch?”

“Tie a cat to a stick and throw it.”

Then they pointed at one another across the table.

Guildenstern said, “Marenne.”

Rosenkrantz said, “And Nemesis.”

They scattered money on the table and left.