Contract Null & Void

Chapter Twenty-three

Karen Marshall had an apartment in one of the new complexes that face the bay from across the refurbished Embarcadero south of the Bay Bridge. Rents went up a tax bracket with each floor, especially if you had picture windows facing the water.

Marshall opened the door wearing dark glasses and no makeup. Flawless skin, hair pulled back in a ponytail; in a white starched blouse with frills at the cuffs and throat, and black silk tights to show off her superb flanks and thighs.

Her face showed surprise, almost a fleeting consternation, when she saw Kearny in the hall. That answered one question: her interest at II Fornaio had been in Groner, not Kearny.

“How did you get my home address?”

Kearny slipped by her into the room. Gone were his reading specs, his stoop, his briefcase. He looked around like an appraiser for bankruptcy court.

“I asked how you got my address. I didn’t ask you in.”

“At your office. They think I’m an attorney who worked with your father.”

He went over to the picture window, looked out at the wheeling gulls above the bay. A cargo vessel stacked with containers was waddling toward the Port of Oakland like a fat man trying to get comfortable in a bathtub. The double windows shielded them from the gulls’ cries. He turned back to her.

“Why so hostile, Ms. Marshall? I understand you wanted Stan to find out where Eddie Graff had moved to.”

“I asked Mr. Groner, not you.”

“Stan asked me.” He walked around, touching objets d’art on polished surfaces. He had no idea if they were originals or museum replicas. “I’m a private investigator.”

She aimed her dark glasses at him. “A private eye. A shamus. A window-peeper. A doorknob-rattler. A dick. A—”

“I get the idea,” said Kearny. “Anyway, that’s why Stan thought I could find Eddie Graff for you.” He waited for her to ask if he had. When she didn’t, he said, “Do you handle any insurance for the Rochemont family in Marin?”

“What would that have to do with anything, Mr. Kearny?”

“You haven’t asked me yet if I located Eddie.”

“I don’t have to ask.” She gave a sudden rueful laugh. “What did you say to him when you found him?”

“Told him you were looking for him. He didn’t seem surprised.”

“How about angry?” She raised her dark glasses. Her left eye was blackened. “That’s why I called in sick today.”

“At least you’ve got him relating to you again.”

“You call a black eye relating? He still has his key, he was here waiting when I came home yesterday afternoon.”

“What time?”

“I’m not going to file a complaint with the police, so what difference does it make? He’d been here long enough to drink one of the bottles of Dom Pérignon I’d been saving for our reunion.”

“Why the assault?”

“He didn’t say. He just talked in circles for an hour while he finished the other bottle, then hit me and walked out.”

“You didn’t see him Tuesday night, did you?”

“Yesterday was enough.”

“You know he has some other woman he’s seeing? A washed-out little blonde...” He paused for a reaction. None. “What if he comes back?”

“Why should he? I was looking for him, not the other way around. As of yesterday afternoon, I’ve quit looking. So...”

Kearny nodded and stood up. He scribbled on the back of a business card, set it on the coffee table. “That’s his address. If he hasn’t moved out because I talked with him.”

“I supposed I should thank you for finding him, but somehow...” She made a rueful gesture at her dark glasses. “Thank Stan for me.”

“And his wife,” said Kearny, again deadpan.

No response. He couldn’t read her eyes because of the dark glasses. He doubted he could have read them without the glasses.

Kearny went down to his car, thinking. He’d pushed her hard, to the point where she should have told him to go pound salt. She hadn’t. And no questions, questions a person normally would ask in all the openings he’d left for questions. Scared? Indifferent to what he knew (or suspected)?

And she’d furnished Eddie Graff with an alibi for the time frame during which Paul’s car had been blown up and Kearny’s car had been shot at. But hadn’t furnished him with anything for Tuesday night when the intruder broke into the Rochemont mansion. Didn’t know it was important, or didn’t care?

Though it was midafternoon, the CLOSED sign was up on the door at Jacques Daniel’s. Usually they opened for lunch, but with Danny gone Bev was only opening at five o’clock for the evening trade. She was alone behind the bar, washing glasses from last night, after a night spent tossing and worrying. Finally she’d put herself to sleep with a fistful of Halcion.

Why couldn’t she intuit where Danny was? Because they were no longer lovers? But that was silly. Should she be thinking of hiring some help? Notifying someone in Paris or Algiers...

Danny never talked about those years. A closed book. And if she made any of those moves, he would really be gone because she would have admitted it to herself. No. Depend on Larry.

Danny always washed glasses by sloshing them around in soapy water, sprinkling them with salt, running them under the tap, setting them upside down to dry — half an hour or so.

She always had hot soapy water in one of the twin sinks, clear cold water in the other, and wore big thick Bluette rubber gloves that protected her hands and halfway up her forearms. Plunge the glass into the steaming water, scrub it inside and out with a little wire-handled dish mop, skoosh it around in the cold water to remove the soap scum, and set it, still steaming, on the drainboard to dry. Maybe ten seconds, dried in maybe forty-five seconds.

They’d argued a lot about the best way to dry bar glasses.

They’d argued a lot about the best way to do the books. Bev had been pushing for Quicken software. Danny favored an old-fashioned accounts ledger, a checkbook, an adding machine — hands on, he knew exactly how much money came in, knew exactly where every sou went. Très bourgeois.

They’d argued a lot about suppliers.

They’d argued a lot about...

Bev realized she was crying, silently, the tears running down her cheeks and splashing in the steaming wash water. She heard the door open. It was unlocked only for the liquor and beer delivery drivers, and it was for them she’d made hot coffee. Her tear-blurred eyes picked out a tall form in the opening. She sniffed and swiped a wet rubber glove across her face.

“We’re closed,” she called.

“It’s me,” said Ballard’s familiar voice.

With a glad cry, Bev ripped off the cumbersome gloves and, as Larry came around the end of the bar, threw herself into his arms. He hugged her close, rocking her gently.

“Have you been looking for Danny?” she asked him.

“That’s about all I’ve been doing — like I told you, my DKA stuff is going to hell.”

She drew them each a draft beer, they went to a table to drink them. Ballard made moody wet rings with his glass.

“All I’ve got is negatives. I’ve seen his file down at the union — nothing in it I didn’t know. He missed their important strike vote Executive Council meeting on Monday night—”

“He was religious about those meetings,” said Beverly.

“His place has been torn up—”

“I knew it! I just knew it! I’ve been afraid to go over there in case I’d find... find...”

“Nothing there to scare you, Bev. It looked to me like whoever it was didn’t find whatever they were looking for. And Danny’s ten-speed bike was missing.”

“That’s good?” she asked in an uncomprehending voice.

He leaned across the table, took her hands, squeezed them. Despite the steaming water, they were cold. He felt like a bastard for having gotten himself sidetracked into his involvement with Amalia Pelotti when he should have been sticking to the Danny hunt. But what else could he have done that he hadn’t done to find Danny?

“It’s okay, Bev — honest. It’ll be okay. There’s just no reason they would have stolen Danny’s bike. And I checked if he’d had an accident — no reports of any. I think he left of his own power before they got there, because you’re almost impossible to spot on a bike, and really impossible to tail by car.”

“Then why hasn’t he at least called me?”

“Last thing he would do if he was involved in some investigation of his own,” said Ballard quickly. “Anyone looking for him would try you first if they thought you knew anything.”

“Do you think... I’m in danger?”

“No. I don’t think you ever were. If nobody’s been around asking questions by now, they won’t be.”

He stood up, started to prowl. She watched him with still-worried eyes. “Was he involved in an investigation?”

Ballard ran through in his mind the things he and Bart had talked about, the revelation that Danny had gotten Bart and Petrock together. He couldn’t tell even Bev about Bart’s undercover charade, not while the cops had Bart as a prime suspect in Petrock’s death; but he had to tell her something.

“Yes. He was.”

“What sort of investigation?”

“Danny got Petrock together with... a P.I. he wanted to put into the Tenderloin undercover.”

Bev was on her feet. “And Petrock is dead! Oh Christ, Danny is—”

“When they killed Petrock, they killed the necessity to go after Danny, don’t you see that?”

He could see that. He hoped he was right. They were facing each other across the table, almost like antagonists. He took her hands, guided her back into her chair, sat down across from her again. At least her hands had warmed up.

“If they didn’t kill the undercover guy, and they didn’t, why would they kill Danny?”

“Then goddammit, why is he hiding?”

He put his arms around her and noticed that her hips, of their own accord, had started moving against him. She took his hands and started for the door behind the bar that led to the flight of stairs to her apartment.

“You can get some sleep upstairs here...”

Any other time Larry would have jumped at the chance to jump Beverly’s bones. Hell, Danny could take care of himself, it was one of the big reasons he’d taken on the hunt for her. But now... Now all of Ballard’s sexual fantasies were coming to bloom at once, crowding in on him, jostling together, canceling one another out. But he couldn’t just...

“Who is she?” Bev murmured.

“Who is who?”

“Whoever fucked you blind last night.”

“It’s just sleeping on the damned couch,” he said lamely. “And being so damned worried about Danny,” he added to the part in her clean blond hair. Her scalp smelled of some floral shampoo. Wasn’t what he said the truth? “I just...”

Beverly laughed and pushed him away with a dancer’s thrust of her hips.

“Let me tell you about the last time I was with Danny,” she said. “Everything. What he said, what I said, what he did. I’ll take it right from the top...”

“Yeah, that’s the best thing to do.” Then he swung off on a tangent, asking, “By the way, why did you tell Kearny that I was looking for Danny?”

“He was drinking beer in here the other night, he acted as if he knew all about it...” She ran down, seeing the disgusted look on Ballard’s face. “He suckered me?”

So that’s how Kearny had known. “Yeah,” said Ballard, his voice grudging even to his own ears as he continued, “Well, at least you got taken by the best in the business.”