Contract Null & Void

Chapter Thirty-four

Nobody could have been more shocked than Trin Morales when he rolled out of bed to switch on the TV for the noon news and learned that Assemblyman Rick Kiely had been gunned down in his home the night before.

“Hey, that can’t be right!” Morales exclaimed out loud to the TV set.

But it was right. They were rerunning the footage from the morning newscast, and there was Kiely’s big goddam mansion out in St. Francis Woods and the body bag coming out of the front door to the porch where Morales had been impaled on police lights and bullhorn just five nights before. Only five? Dios, it seemed longer than that.

Moving with the body were a couple of big homicide dicks who somehow looked alike, even though one was bald and the other had hair. Then Kiely’s face and dates were flashed on the screen, talking heads endlessly mouthed words over the visuals...

Same M.O. as Petrock. Which meant Kiely hadn’t ordered Petrock’s killing after all — not unless it was a deliberate payback by Petrock’s pals, and Morales didn’t believe that for a second. Petrock hadn’t had any pals.

So why had Kiely seemed to go along with it when Morales had hinted he knew Kiely had ordered the killing?

To find out what he knew, maybe. Or in hopes Morales would go out and blunder around and stir things up and maybe get the real killers after him so Kiely could scope them out...

He flicked off the TV with an angry gesture, went in for his shower and shave. As he dressed, he thought in his usual pissed-off way that he’d been shafted again. No plush security job on Kiely’s Sacramento staff. No high-class chicas, no big expense account...

Hijo de puta! Why hadn’t Kiely been who Morales thought he had been, a murderer that Morales had a lock on? Now... Shit, now back to repossessions for goddam Dan Kearny.

He went out his front door and goddam Dan Kearny was standing on the stoop, just about to push his bell.

“I want to know what you were doing nosing around down at Local Three, Trin.”

Morales started to bluster. “That goddam Ballard...”

Kearny took him by the arm and turned him around and escorted him back into his own damn house. Kicked the door shut behind them.

“That isn’t what I asked you, Morales. Why were you snooping around down at that labor union?”

“What if I told you to shove it?”

“You wouldn’t want to do that,” said Kearny in his coldest voice. He hadn’t moved, had gotten very still, in fact; it was as if he were leaning a tremendous weight on Morales without even touching him. Kearny was a guy who would go all the way, every time. “You were on my time, driving my car, with my gasoline, so spit it out.”

“Aw, shit,” said Trin, resignation on his brown moon face.

He told Kearny everything he knew, right from the time he’d been hired anonymously by phone to snoop Kiely’s house, down to hiding out because he’d put the arm on Kiely and was afraid the politician might send someone after him.

Everything he had done had been stupid, Kearny said, pure Morales, and everything he knew was a big handful of nothing.

“You’ll be lucky if Homicide doesn’t pay you a call.”

“He didn’t press charges so I was never booked.” Some of Trin’s jauntiness was coming back. “I’ll make out okay.”

“What I want you to start making out on is this stack of repos,” Kearny said, handed him a sheaf of assignments, and left.

With a look of disgust on his face. What’d he ever do that was so wonderful, make him so high and mighty? He grubbed after a buck just like Trin did, right? Just trying to make Morales do everybody else’s repos while they got to do real P.I. work. Still, there were some easy-looking REPO ON SIGHTS here, and it was a cinch to dummy up bogus expenses for a REPO ON SIGHT.

When Giselle left the Transamerica Tower, on her own after six days constantly with others, she drove around in what she thought was an aimless manner through the city she loved.

Out Columbus and at Tower Records taking Bay up over the far shoulder of Russian Hill. Waiting patiently for a cable car to rattle down the Hyde Street hill to the turnaround at Aquatic Park. Moored out at the end of Hyde Street Pier, the restored clipper ship Balclutha looking ready to head off around the Horn.

Fluffy clouds peeked over the tops of the far Marin hills, Alcatraz Island was like some lumpy old warship abandoned in the middle of the bay. It was a bright, beautiful spring day, happy people crowding the weekend streets.

Oh, hell. After making the suggestion to Kearny just to bug him, Giselle couldn’t get the thought out of her mind. What if Frank Nugent did try to poison the fish or something at the banquet? At Franklin she swerved into Fort Mason, a small, jewel-like former army base snuggled between Aquatic Park and the Marina. Not too many years before, white-gloved M.P.’s had stopped cars entering the base with a salute and a question about their destination. Now it was National Park land, the gates untended.

The divided road was lined with flowering plums. She turned right into narrow eucalyptus-shaded MacArthur, looped around to park near a sprawling yellow wooden building. Originally the post commander’s residence, for many years it had been the Fort Mason Officers Club for commissioned officers and their guests.

Now it was open to the general public, rented for that night by Bernardine Rochemont for her banquet in honor of her son’s... what? Almost a coming-out party, Giselle thought; today I am a man. Half a billion bucks says so.

She picked her way through sunlight and dapple under big overarching trees, went down the side of the building past an impressive array of garbage pails into the organized madness of the sprawling kitchen. Great smells, chefs in white jackets and tall hats zipping back and forth between stoves, ovens, freezers, man-size refrigerators and counters covered with food.

As she wandered through the bedlam, terribly tempted to stick a finger into this pot, grab something off that platter, a uniformed rent-a-cop popped up in front of her.

“Hold it right there, ma’am. I’ll have to know your business here.”

Giselle was delighted that Bernardine actually had employed security; apparently she was not as convinced as Kearny that all danger was past for Paul. Giselle hauled out the miniaturized photocopy of her state P.I.’s license.

“Personal security for Mrs. Rochemont, checking up.” She gave him a stern nod. “Good work. Carry on.”

But she had gone only a few steps before she was face-to-face with a bristling red-faced man who could only be a pastry chef. He had a Frenchman’s supercilious sneer, magnificent mustache, and irritated manner.

“Que faites-vous in my kitchen?” he thundered.

Giselle was unfazed. “Private investigator employed by Mrs. Rochemont to check security. I’m glad to see she has hired an additional guard to protect her son this evening.”

He looked at her as if she were mad. “Her son? What do I care for her son? Sacré bleu, ce n’est pas pour... It is I who have paid for security, madame. I moi-même have hired this private gendarme to protect my piece de résistance.”

He gestured proudly, with a great flourish, to a secluded corner of the kitchen where the guard now stood next to a circle of drawn curtains hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Giselle started toward it, was sidetracked by a tray of vol au vent that lay temptingly on the table beside her.

The chef couldn’t help noticing her admiration. He snapped his fingers at a sous-chef working nearby.

“Pâté,” he ordered.

The sous-chef scurried over and piped pate into the form with a flourish, topping it gracefully with a real honest-to-goodness truffle. He slipped the filled pastry cup onto a plate and handed it to the chef.

The chef handed it to Giselle.

“I have been testing the oven,” he said in deprecation. “Température is très important.”

“Yummy!” Giselle could have eaten the whole tray.

“Mais oui. Yummy. But not as magnifique as...” He nodded toward the corner with its circle of curtains.

She shook her head regretfully and took out her ID again.

“I’m sorry, I really need to look at it. I have to check the premises thoroughly before the guests arrive.”

The chef was aghast. “I wish my creation to be a surprise. Would you break the egg before the chick was ready to be born?”

“It is as much in the interest of your supreme creation as it is in my interest.”

“Ah!” The chef was grave. “Bon!”

With a sideways toss of the head, he motioned the guard to stand aside. He drew the curtains wide with a flourish. Inside was a fantastic cylinder of baked meringue six feet in diameter and four feet deep, covered with a lid of more baked meringue.

“What is it?” Giselle asked.

“Maintenant it is nothing. But when, at the last possible moment, I fill it with whipped cream, crème glacé and fraises, it will be a Viennese windtorte that will astound tout le monde.”

“Then it is empty.”

“Mais oui.”

There were not too many times Giselle felt foolishly punctilious, but this was one. She made a hesitant gesture.

“Would you... please...”

The chef nodded gravely, went to the sink and washed his hands. He came back drying them on a fresh towel, lifted the top by a delicate baked meringue swirl that functioned as a handle.

Giselle leaned forward to look into the fragile depths without touching the shell itself. On the inside, unlike the decorated exterior, she could see the engineering: ring after ring of meringue baked and mortared together with more meringue, then rebaked in its final grand dimensions.

It was quite empty. She looked up to see the chef watching her. He waggled a finger at her.

“You must give away mon secret to absolument no one.”

Giselle put a finger to her lips and nodded her promise, then asked, “How will you prepare the strawberries?”

“Voilà!” He ladled rosy sauce into a small bowl. It tasted of strawberries and fine cognac and other unfathomable mysteries. He said complacently, “This, too, is a secret.”

Giselle checked the rest of the premises thoroughly. Then stuck around just in case... Certainly not just to sample more incredible cuisine and practice her rusty French on the pastry chef. Mais non. Absolument non!

Having trashed Morales, Dan Kearny was back at his desk in the Saturday-deserted DKA office, a cup of steaming coffee, his half-full ashtray, and a pack of smokes on his desk blotter. Having a hard time keeping his mind on the sadly overdue billing.

He threw down his pen, strolled between empty desks. No messages at Jane Goldson’s reception area by the front door except a scurrilous fax from O’B. So he had gotten the truck tires, big deal. That’s what he was being paid for. Granted, Nordstrom had just about wiped out tough Tony d’Angelo, nobody’s patsy, and O’B had come through, but...

He gave his mind to the questions. Why had Danny Marenne disappeared? Who had hired Morales to prowl Kiely’s house? Not Petrock, for sure, but somebody had. The same somebody who had hired Bart to beat up Larry? And both Petrock and Kiely had been shotgunned to death.

The cops were looking for Bart Heslip, and he and Larry were playing their usual gumshoe games. And not calling in. Had Ballard learned anything from Amalia Pelotti? Had anything happened to Heslip in the Tenderloin? If so, what?

Kearny sighed and went back to his desk and sat down and stared distastefully at the towering stack of billing folders. His people had gotten too good, they didn’t need to check in with the old man anymore. They had the fun, he did the billing.

But not yet. How did Karen Marshall really know Stan Groner? Had Groner been an entrée to the Rochemonts for her? He got the “Rochemont, Bernardine” folder from the file cabinet beside his desk, opened it. He’d never asked Bernardine if Marshall had ever tried to sell life insurance to her or Paul.

Why, to find her former boyfriend, Eddie Graff, had Marshall rushed to Stan for help in such a hurry — panic almost — rather than to the cops? Obviously, because she didn’t want the cops involved.

Something danced around at the edge of his mental vision, but he couldn’t catch it. It would come.

What if Nugent was dead and Eddie Graff, posing as Nugent, had blown up Paul Rochemonts new Mercedes? Tried to run Kearny off the road, shot at his car? Could it even be Eddie Graff who had entered Paul’s bedroom on Tuesday night? If so, why had Inga said it was Nugent? Was he, not Nugent, Inga’s secret lover?

If she had a secret lover. Maybe this whole thing wasn’t about Paul’s microchip at all, but was about... what?

It eluded him. But either way, Giselle might well be right that it wasn’t over, that Paul was still in danger.

He sighed, started to close the Rochemont file, but was staring at yesterday’s page of notes made during his conversation with Chief Rowan up in Larkspur.

With sudden energy, Dan Kearny slupped down the last of his coffee, grabbed up his cigarettes, and headed for the door.