Contract Null & Void

Chapter Twenty-eight

Charlie Bagnis, owner or at least manager of Mood Indigo, was a slight man who looked like a theater usher left over from a 1930s Saturday kiddy matinee. The sort who whacked little boys on the shins with a big flashlight if they had their feet up on the back of the seat in front of them.

He wore a black narrow-lapel suit and gleaming patent-leather shoes like those you get when you rent a tux for a wedding. He also had a poor complexion, narrow-set snapping black eyes flanking a frankly generous nose, and impossibly black, impossibly shiny hair parted in the middle and slicked down on either side of his head. The hair was as truly patent leather as the shoes.

He came into Mood Indigo through the alley door and squeaked at Bart, “They’re waiting for you in the alley.” His nasty voice matched his nasty eyes.

“So was somebody last night.”

“These guys are gonna make you some money.”

Sleepy Ray Sykes grabbed a handful of blues chords off the piano to toss them out into the room. Maybelle started to sing:

Her own whole big suddenly wicked body was moving to the beat of Sleepy Ray’s piano; her head was back and her voice flowed over everybody there to transform the scuzzy Tenderloin bar into a nostalgic ’30s Harlem hot spot made golden by time.

“Who the fuck’re they?”

“Couple of your customers.”

“What the fuck’re they doing?”

“Filling up this joint like it hasn’t been filled in years. It’s called music, Charlie-baby.”

The alley door shut behind Bart. While Bagnis stared open-mouthed at the duo up on his unused stage, Larry Ballard came in the front door, stopped dead at sight of Maybelle in her red dress bringing down the house:

The gray-haired man Bart had served had his instrument case up on the table now and was taking out a battered but lovingly shined trumpet. People were calling to Bagnis to send up drinks. Maybelle was flushed with pleasure at the crowd and its reaction. Larry caught her eye as he threaded his way through the throng. She came forward to the edge of the stage.

“Larry, honey, whut you doing here?”

Ballard chuckled. “Better yet, what’re you doing here?”

“Havin’ me a little fun with my friend Sleepy Ray. Ray, this here’s Larry Ballard, a real good friend of mine.”

Sleepy Ray raised his right hand from the keyboard in greeting as his left walked the dog. “Peace, brother.”

Larry gestured Maybelle to lean down. “Maybelle, has there been a black bartender in here tonight with a ring through—”

“You mean Bart,” she said complacently. “I rec’nized him.” Catching Larry’s urgency, she moved her eyes toward the bar’s alley door without moving her head. “White dude behind the bar showed up, Bart took off his apron and went out the back door just as you was comin’ in the front.”

“Damn! I’ve got to warn him the cops might be back again. If you see him before I do—”

“I’ll shoo him on outta here,” she said.

Old Maybelle would make a hell of a detective herself — cool under pressure. He went past the stage to the rear hallway where the rest room and door to the alley were. Sleepy Ray was starting Harlem Hannah’s “Nose” and Maybelle was singing again.

Larry stood scowling at the empty alley for a moment, then sighed and turned back inside. Lost his girl and his best friend all in one night.

The two men in the front seat of the long black Chrysler sedan were both white. Heslip was in the back. The driver, a nondescript chain-smoker with glasses and hunched shoulders that made him look like a vulture, drove aimlessly through the Tenderloin. The man beside him was about ten years younger, narrow-chested, had a tight, judging face like a Mormon’s.

“We hear you had a little trouble closing up the bar last night,” said the Vulture from behind the wheel, holding Bart’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Those were your guys?” Bart asked.

“Call it a little test — they weren’t really trying.”

“Neither was I or they’d all three of ’em still be in the alley. And you gents owe me for the new leather jacket they ruined — the guy with the knife meant business.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said the Mormon.

“Don’t never kid about money.”

The driver started a turn uphill into Leavenworth. An aged black man with a little white mustache, a mountain hat, a blue jacket, and a cane was very slowly crossing the intersection against the light, head up, eyes straight ahead, totally inside himself with the pain of walking on knees without cartilage.

“Get outta the way, you fuckin’ coon!”

The Vulture blared his horn, snapped the smoldering butt of his cigarette out the window against the old man’s shoulder. He pushed in the lighter to fire up his next cigarette, breathing hard as if he’d been running.

“You guys got something for me besides lousy manners?” Bart asked in a flat, cold voice.

The Mormon turned on the seat to spear him with icy eyes.

“You don’t like our manners you can get out right here.”

Bart chuckled and shook his head. “Uh-uh. You guys need me for something.”

The Vulture took a left on Pine. Here, a few blocks above the Tenderloin, were middle-class apartment houses: San Francisco was a town of micro-habitats.

“We want somebody dumped.”

“But do you have the seeds for it?” sneered the Mormon.

“Dumped” was an inexact underworld term that could mean anything from a beating to an execution. Since one man was already dead, victim of a hit, he wanted to pin them down quick.

“I got the seeds,” said Ballard, “you got the bread? Five large, half up front.”

“A grand,” said the Vulture, finding Bart’s eyes in the rearview again. “This is just a simple strong-arm chore.”

“How simple?”

The Vulture turned downhill on Larkin, the rents in the apartment houses flanking the street falling with each block.

“Put a guy in the hospital for a few days.”

“Two large,” said Bart promptly. “Half up front.”

The Mormon surprised him by taking an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and counting out ten $100 bills. He kept the money in his hand.

“You get the rest when we read about it in the papers.”

“Tell me who and where, I’ll figure out the when.”

If Bart had a name, he could somehow warn the intended victim or at least figure out why they wanted him beaten.

Trin Morales needed fresh underwear and his stash of cash in a little hidey-box he’d made under the kitchen sink. But were they still staking out his place — if they ever had been?

“Hey, chica,” he said to the 13-year-old girl in the car with him, “ahora. Vamos a mi casa.”

“Si, jefe.”

“I will give you a key, you will go in first and turn on the lights so I will know you are safe.”

“Si, jefe.” He would report her to Immigration unless she did for him certain specific sexual things she’d never heard of.

If someone was staking out the place, they’d get her, not him. Same if they’d booby-trapped it. And if it was safe, he could enjoy the little chica before throwing her out in the A.M.

The Vulture just kept driving the same fucking streets, but a parked car with men in it always drew the cops’ eyes eventually. Bart decided to push a little. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the back of the front seats.

“When you said dumped, I figured it maybe for a hit. That guy in my union, Petrock, got taken off the other night, that looked professional to me. Figured maybe there was somebody else had to go, but your hitters had left town.”

“What made you think it was our hitters?”

“We’re here, ain’t we?”

The Mormon’s eyes found Bart in the rearview again.

“I heard there was three guys in on that one. The guy who set it up, the driver, and the guy that did it.”

The Vulture slid the car to a stop across Eddy Street from Mood Indigo. His voice was full of something bordering on awe, mixed with a slight sick enthusiasm.

“I heard they used a twelve-gauge double-barrel. One barrel of double-O shot, the other a deer slug. I heard that at close range like that, it just tears a guy apart.”

“For guys aren’t involved, you seem to hear a hell of a lot,” said Bart. The remark didn’t seem to alert them.

“We get around, boy,” bragged the Mormon.

“Heard the shooter and driver got five K each for the job.” The Vulture gave a sudden unexpected shudder. “Driving, okay, but you couldn’t give me a hundred grand to pull the trigger.”

“You got any more like that, let me know,” said Bart. “I need the dough.”

“It’s easy to be a tough guy sitting here in the car all warm and toasty,” said the Mormon. “You do this little strong-arm for us, maybe we’ll have something bigger for you next time.”

“Fine by me,” said Bart. He reached a hand over the back of the front seat toward the Mormon. “Give me my up-front grand and tell me who I’m supposed to beat up.”

The Vulture took a heavy drag on his eighth cigarette since Bart had gotten into the car. “We don’t know much about him except his name and what he looks like.”

“You might be able to find him at Local Three,” said the Mormon. He added with sudden surprising viciousness, “The guy’s a nobody, a nosy son of a bitch.”

“Heard he turned up at the St. Mark picket line, too.”

How much did they really know about the operation of Local 3, how much was hearsay? He didn’t have much time to find out.

“He a member of the union?”

“Nah,” said the Mormon. “Tall blond number, loves himself.”

Like you, thought Heslip.

“Goes by the name of Larry’ Ballard,” said the Vulture.