Contract Null & Void

Chapter Two

As Ballard slammed down his receiver out in the Sunset, Georgi Petrock slammed his drink down on the bar in that part of downtown once known as the Polk Gulch. The narrow saloon on the corner of Post Street had ornate gold lettering edged in black across its front facade:

directly over a maroon sign with Gay ’90s lettering that read:

There were no women, and most of the men crowding the hardwood bar were wearing black spandex or leather.

“Used to be that if a new hotel opened up it automatically would become union,” Petrock boomed from his stool near the front door. He drank from a beer mug with PETROCK decaled around its side. “Now the bastards fight tooth and nail to keep us out. Lookit the St. Mark — they’re hiring union busters to run a fight that hasn’t even started yet!” He put a confiding arm around the man next to him, not bothering to lower his voice very much. “But I rammed the vote right down that sick, feeble-minded sellout artist’s spic throat, Ray! By tomorrow this time, our people will have hit the bricks.”

“Jesus, Georgi,” muttered Ray Do, the local’s diminutive secretary-treasurer and one of Petrock’s allies on the council. “Not so loud! The rank and file still have to—”

“I’m their president, they’ll go along with what I want.”

“Buncha goddam sheep if they do,” said a voice.

Petrock whirled to glare at the black man sitting on a stool in front of one of the pinball machines that crowded the front of the saloon. With a sort of flourish, the man spun his stool a couple of times to end up facing the two union men.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded Petrock.

“Just call me Nemesis. I tend bar in the ’Loin, I don’t know down the till and I don’t need no fat-ass union pricks tellin’ me I ought to.”

Nemesis was a good half foot shorter than Petrock, plum black, with kinky hair and a thin mustache, black leather vest and pants, no shirt. The hard planes of his chest shifted with his breathing, his arms were shapely with muscle; he had an exaggerated breadth of shoulder and tightness of waist.

Petrock was very red in the face. He yelled, “Harry’ Bridges saved the asses of the working stiffs in this town back in the thirties, an’ I’m doin’ it today! But Harry didn’t have to work with spics and jigs!”

“Spics an say whut?” demanded the black man, leaning into him as if into a brisk wind.

Petrock gave his sneering laugh, turned back to the others.

“Whadda ya say to a jig in a three-piece suit?” When nobody responded, he said, “Would the defendant please rise?”

“That’s twice.” There was a dangerous gleam in the eye of Nemesis.

Petrock said, “The micks dance jigs, I dance on jigs.”

“An the jig’s up.”

The black man came off his stool in a smooth panther rush to sink a looping bolo punch into Petrock’s rather flabby belly.

“Ooof!” Petrock sat down on his butt on the floor, a very surprised look on his face.

His attacker pointed a dictatorial finger at him.

“Jus stay there on yo ass where you b’long, white boy. You get up we gonna dance fo sure, an I don’t enjoy waltzing with no faggots.” At the door he paused. “You’d look funny, Petrock, tryna kiss the pavement ’thout no face on the fronta yo haid.”

As the black man angled away across Polk Street, hands in his pockets, whistling to himself, Trinidad Morales was leaving a large white house with Georgian pillars on Hazelwood out in exclusive St. Francis Woods. The owners, names unknown to him, were attending a gown and blacktie affair at Davies Hall.

Trin Morales was another DKA field man with a fistful of month-end cases to work, but right now he was moonlighting. He didn’t know why he had been paid to memorize the layout of the house and look for a hidden safe, or who had paid him, but he didn’t care. The dinero was damned good, up-front, and tax-free.

He went out boldly but silently, pulling the front door shut behind him, stuffing one of his habitual cheap cigars into his face — to be slapped in the kisser by a powerful spotlight.

“Police!” boomed a bullhorned voice. “Freeze!”

Morales, impaled on the light like a butterfly on a pin, was a broad brown moon-faced man of 35, with small quick hands and too much belly. A gold tooth glinted when his thick lips smiled, but the smile seldom reached his eyes.

Right now he was almost smiling, because he had resisted the temptation to lift the homeowner’s exquisite solid-gold flatwear, and he had no burglar tools in his pocket. On such things are probation instead of hard time based. The Chicana maid he had threatened with la Migra and deportation had left the door unlocked for him, but the stupid puta hadn’t told him about the silent alarm. Probably not bright enough to know there was such a thing as electronics. Squinting, he raised his hands.

While Trin Morales was read his rights in San Francisco, up in the redwood logging country some three hundred miles north, redheaded Patrick Michael O’Bannon — O’B to the rest of the troops of DKA — had just come from the Eureka General Hospital room of Tony d’Angelo, his damaged predecessor. He was on his way to a bar called the Sawdust Lounge to watch a man play the musical saw.

And in Kent Woodlands, Ken Warren had started to get out of the car to remonstrate with the Nutcracker soldier, but Giselle had grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back in.

“I can’t take you anywhere.” She pushed the button, said into the speaker, “Giselle Marc and Ken Warren for Bernardine Rochemont. By appointment.”

The guard made no move to open the gate. Instead, he repeated, in the same tone of voice, “What a heap of tin!”

“He’s a mechanical man!” Giselle exclaimed.

But there was a buzzing sound and the guard jerked sideways and disappeared, to reappear a moment later. “Wha-wha-wha-what a hea-hea-hea-heap of ti-ti-ti-tin!” he sneered.

The gate swung majestically open. Giselle drove through, it swept shut behind the car. With a sudden sideways shimmer and an electronic buzz, the guard abruptly disappeared for good.

“Nn holongrahm,” said Warren.

“Not a very good one.”

“Hnebtre nan mos.”

How did he know it was a hologram and better than most? Ken’s speech impediment masked a brain that was quick and clear. Would she be able to stand the frustration of never getting out what was in her mind except in mangled form?

The drive curved uphill from the gate, flanked on the right by redwoods and on the left by a stone wall overarched with maples in pale green spring leaf picked up by their headlights.

“Nhookit!”

Giselle looked. The edge of her lights showed them massive ghosting hounds; their baying had never stopped.

“Are... are they real?” she asked.

“Nn holongrahms,” said Ken.

“I’m not surprised,” said Giselle. “This place belongs to a Mrs. Rochement. Her son Paul’s designed a revolutionary computer to program all sorts of...”

“Hnthengs?” ventured Ken.

“Exactly. Things. And a big electronics outfit is giving him all the money in the world for his design specifications.”

She grabbed Kens arm. She thought she had seen, through the redwoods, the writhing scaled form of a great dragon.

“Did you see...” She paused, made her voice as much like Ken’s as she could. “Nnoder holongrahm.”

Ken laughed, but by then they had run out of the woods to a huge circular gravel driveway lit by spotlights. On the far side the house was three-stoned, imposing, in an ornate style Giselle believed was called Italianate, with angled flat-topped roofs and twin towers she thought were called mansard. Next to the house was a two-story garage with servants’ quarters above it. Definitely not holograms.

Parked in front of the garage was a spanking new Mercedes SL600 convertible roadster with its top down, despite the chilly spring evening. Giselle’s mind automatically ran the tab on it: it took $130,000 and change to drive that model Mercedes off the showroom floor.

Ken said, “Hntolen?”

“That’s what Stan the Man said. Stolen. That’s supposed to be why he called us in. He didn’t give many details.”

Giselle parked behind the Mercedes, and Ken got out. She followed him over to the car with long, clean-limbed strides, an exquisite blonde who would have owned the runway as a mannequin, except she would have preferred to own the modeling agency. Men who should have known better often looked at her legs and forgot about the brain ticking away beneath that gleaming cap of golden hair.

She began, “Since they already got their car back, maybe they want us to throw a scare into...”

But a front fender was riddled with bullet holes, two tires were flat, the windshield was shattered. Who was scaring whom?

“Somebody doesn’t like somebody very much,” she said. “Maybe I ought to get myself a gun.”

“What kid of a shamus doesn’t own a gun?” said a voice behind her in a Bogart lisp.

He was genus Computerus nerdus personified: late 20s, skinny, scrawny, only partially post-acne, his horn-rims fixed with Scotch tape. A plastic protector crammed with pencils and pens distended the pocket of his white cambric shirt. Chino floods, with cuffs, ended three inches above his shoetops, and he was wearing, for God’s sake, penny loafers!

“The kind of shamus that doesn’t like to get shot at,” said Giselle sweetly.

“What the hell kind of field man is sitting home drinking coffee on the last night of the month?” demanded Dan Kearny.

They were driving out Lincoln Way and Ballard was feeling aggrieved. Man’s sitting there giving him advice, after just being kicked out by his wife. On top of that, after he had graciously agreed to his boss spending a night or two sleeping in his apartment, Kearny had taken the bed and left him the damned couch to sleep on; a couch that was three inches too short for his nearly six feet in length.

He said through almost gritted teeth, “The kind of field man who won’t find any of his subjects home until after the bars close even if it is a weeknight.”

Ballard pulled a left across deserted Lincoln Way and parked on 21st Ave. He started to get out of the car. Kearny opened his door also.

“Ah, this is personal, Dan. I won’t be long...”

“Jesus, nobody wants the old man around,” grumbled Kearny, getting out exactly as if Ballard hadn’t spoken.

Ballard thought, a shotei to the chin, a hiraken across the side of the face, a uraken to the temple, finish off with a basic karate fist smashed down on top of his head... Solve nothing, but leave Ballard feeling great.

Instead, sighing, he walked across the narrow street to the once-failing neighborhood bar that Bev and Danny had upscaled into success with fake Tiffany glass and hanging ferns and their own personalities. Now they sponsored a softball team and did heavy singles-crowd business on the weekends or when a major sporting event was on their big-screen TV.

Tonight there were only three customers. A couple at one of the wooden tables and a lean brunette in black tights and a tank top and a purple sports jacket made out of blanket wool. She had a half-drunk glass of draft balanced on top of the jukebox while she read the selections, cigarette in hand.

Beverly, looking like a size 4 porcelain doll with big blue eyes and blond hair, was manning the bar.

“Thank God!” she exclaimed at the sight of him.

Ballard shushed her with a gesture of his hand Kearny couldn’t see.

“Don’t start in on me now, babe, until I can explain...” He turned as if just remembering Kearny was there. “Dan...”

Kearny grunted and moved away down the stick. As he passed the facsimile Wurlitzer that actually played CDs instead of 45s, the woman studying the selections said aggrievedly, “Jesus, they don’t have anything by Toad the Wett Sprockett!”

“You’re kidding!” exclaimed Kearny.

“You were pretty rude to Dan,” Bev was saying to Ballard.

“You gotta be — early and often. You’re going to ask me to do something for you, and I’m going to end up doing it.” He spoke with a fatalistic gallantry. “If he knows I’m doing something for you he’ll bitch about it being on company time.”

“Will it be on company time?”

“Of course.”

Despite her worry, Bev had to giggle. He had once repossessed her car; their personal relationship had begun shortly after that during the repo of a Maserati Bora coupe from a rock band calling itself Full Moon Madness. It had been madness between them ever since: hot, stormy, and intermittent.

“Any word from Danny yet?” She shook her head. “Okay. As quick and quiet as you can, tell me what he was doing before he disappeared.”

“The usual around here. But you know he was an officer of the bartenders’ union before the merger with Local Three—”

“No, but what difference does it make?”

“He’s been a member of the Executive Council of the consolidated union ever since, and has been a thorn in their side the whole time. Now they’re talking about striking the St. Mark Hotel and there are two factions on the council...”

“Which side is Danny on?”

“I’m not sure, which in itself is pretty weird. Usually we talk over everything that might affect business.”

Three noisy yuppies with designer clothes and extra-wide personalities came in, and Bev went to serve them. Her partner, Jacques Daniel, could be abrasive and opinionated, but he was a nonpolitical — the last person Ballard would have expected to be mixed up in union politics, which were always complicated, often tough, sometimes dangerous.

Danny had been raised in Algiers with foreign legionnaires as role models. Despite his diminutive build he was Larry’s equal in karate and SCUBA diving, his superior in toughness. He could have disappeared for his own reasons, but nobody could have disappeared him without a struggle. So, Larry thought, go slow.

The way her skirt emphasized Beverly’s shapely dancer’s thighs as she served the clamorous young professionals caught his eye, but he was all business by the time she got back to him. She stood on her toes to lean her five-foot-two closer across the bar as though her life depended on him.

“What would you like me to do?” he asked.

“What you always do. Find him.”

He snatched a peek at his watch. It was the last night of the month, always the busiest night of the month, and Bart was on vacation, O’B was covering for their disabled man in Eureka, and Kearny would be on Larry’s butt because they were shorthanded.

But Bev caught the glance, and her face went hard as stone.

“I thought you were Danny’s friend.”

“I am, Bev,” he said hurriedly, “but it’s the end of the month so I’ll be shagging cars for Cal-Cit Bank all night.”

Beverly knew what that meant, all right. “Item accounts?”

Cal-Cit Bank was DKA’s major client, and item accounts were debtors a month overdue; Beverly had been one herself once. The efficiency of the bank’s zone men who assigned out repos was judged by how few “items” they had at the end of any given month.

“Yeah. But I told you I’d do it and I will. I’ll find Danny. I just gotta slide it by Kearny when he isn’t looking.”

They involuntarily glanced down the bar; Kearny was just putting a coin in the juke for the brunette in the black tights.

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” said Beverly snidely.

O’B had heard some lousy saw-playing in his day, but this was the worst. At least the wailing voice fit the wailing lyrics and the wailing saw:

“Ah me-e-et with a wooman, we waint awn a spre-e-e,

She taught me-e-e to smoke an’ draink whuske-e-ey!”

O’Bannon had been trying to cut down on the booze since Dan Kearny had briefly benched him during last year’s big Gypsy hunt, but up here in the rain and fog a man needed a phlegm-cutter now and then. Still, he was virtuously sticking to longneck Bud. He rapped his empty on the bar, got a nod from the busy bartender.

O’B was a wiry 50, five-eight and 155 pounds, his thick wavy red hair only now getting watered down with gray, the hound-dog blue eyes in his freckle-splattered drinker’s face innocent of guile. Which made him the best con man — for that, read field man — around, except for Dan Kearny himself.

He sighed. Mercifully, the awful voice and shimmering whine of saw were partially lost in the racket — out-of-work loggers and their women did not a sensitive audience make.

Sweat was standing on the singer’s face. Six-six, bearded, hulking, wearing a plaid lumberjack’s shirt under two-inch-wide suspenders. Looked like anything but a musician: looked like, for instance, a long-haul big-rig driver. He was giving it his all, which was not enough. Suddenly he leaped to his feet.

“Goddammit!” It silenced the room, turned all eyes toward the narrow stage in the way his playing had failed to do. He held the saw across his chest, serrated teeth resting against his left biceps. “Whadda ya want me to do? Saw off my goddam arm?”

Someone said, “Yeah,” in a conversational voice and the patrons burst into spontaneous applause.

“You see those bastards?” he demanded plaintively when O’B caught up with him at his battered seven-year-old Ford Escort wagon in the Sawdust Lounge’s parking lot.

O’B, who had come here tonight solely to scratch up an acquaintance with the guy, whose name was Nordstrom, merely held out a half pint of Seagram’s he’d brought along for emergencies. The screw-off cap already had been removed.

“Yeah, Jesus,” said the saw-player, reaching greedily for it like a baby for the breast.