Dead Skip

Eleven

The Mysterious East Bay, as Herb Caen always called it in his daily Chronicle column. Ha. About as mysterious as a bag of dirty laundry. A big hot sprawl of nothing, like L.A., with all those cute names the subdividers loved. Glorietta. Saranap. Gregory Gardens. Housewives driving around in shorts and hair curlers, men drinking beer at the drags on Sunday.

Christ, he was tired. Used up.

And the clock pushing him, pushing all the time, so he couldn’t afford any mistakes, couldn’t miss any nuances. He didn’t have time for backtracking. He had to get everything there was to get out of a single interview; rechecking leads burned up precious minutes, hours.

One nice thing about Castro Valley, however: he was far enough south to be out of radio reach of Oakland Control. Half a mile away Interstate 580 whined and yelped like caged lab animals awaiting dissection; but this part of Castro Valley Boulevard was big old frame houses that must have been here before World War II. Overlaid with hot-dog stands and drive-ins and laundromats and gas stations now, but with the old residential neighborhood still showing through like silver through the tarnish.

The rambling white house at 3877 had a lawn. It even had a garage instead of a carport. He walked across the grass just to feel it under his shoes; the back yard was full of roses. In the garage was an old Mercury whose license he didn’t even bother to jot down.

He had stopped to eat, bringing twilight close enough for lights to burn in the front room. The door was finally opened by a woman with iron-gray hair, of about the same vintage as the house. “Sorry I took so long; I was on the phone.”

“I wonder if I might speak with Charles, ma’am.”

“Chuck? My goodness, he hasn’t lived here for — oh, seven, eight months anyway.” She was vaguely horse-faced, with glasses, and surprisingly vigorous physical movements — which probably explained (and were explained by) that yardful of fantastic roses.

“Do you know where I might get in touch with him?”

“My goodness, no, I don’t.” She emphasized don’t; it was a Midwest trick of speech, Illinois, Iowa, somewhere like that.

“I understood this was his mother’s house.”

“It was. She was my sister, you see, and...”

Which made her Mrs. Western. In the original investigation she had been contacted in Sacramento, where she had lived in a tract house. Once started, Harriet Western was a talker.

“... still in escrow, but Marian did leave the house to Chuck, and in February he asked if I wanted to live in it. Just gave me the keys. Too many associations for him, he said. I moved in last month. He and his mother were awfully close, time he lived a life of his own. Over forty years old, big, fine-looking man — always was. Marian just couldn’t let go...”

Big, fine-looking man. Big enough to bounce a blackjack off Bart’s skull? Big enough, fine enough, to carry a 158-pound limp body into a basement garage, stuff it into a Jaguar, slide it over behind the wheel when the time came?

“When you say big, Mrs. Western...”

“Heavens, six feet tall, two-hundred-ten pounds now that he’s lost all that weight. Was two-hundred-forty. And he lifts those barbell things around — he’s strong as an ox. I remember...”

Better and better, Griffin looked. She hadn’t seen him since the first week in February when he’d given her the keys, knew nothing of California Street in Concord.

Because of that Concord lead, Ballard had gone the seven miles east to the 680 Interstate interchange instead of doubling back through Oakland. Now he was zipping north through the valley in light traffic. Very good indeed, Griffin looked. Especially after Ballard had asked Harriet Western about the cash he’d understood her sister had left to Griffin.

“Cash? Cash money?” She’d given a hearty full-throated laugh. “She had this house free and clear, and that was all. Chuck’s father was killed in a car accident in 1954, didn’t leave her a dime of insurance. Chuck was the one giving her cash, not the other way around...”

Yeah, and Ballard had a pretty good idea where the cash had been coming from, too; at least during the past few years. Have to call JRS tomorrow, find out if an audit had been talked of before Griffin had taken off. He might have known his peculations had become gross enough so they would be caught when someone else went through the books, even if none of the partners realized it.

Charles M. Griffin, age forty-one, white, single, a middle-aged swinger driving that middle-aged swinger’s car, the Thunderbird. And thief? And would-be murderer? And where, oh, where, are you, Chuckie baby?

Meanwhile, Ballard, cool goddamn private eye, got lost.

Made it all the way up through Danville and Alamo and Walnut Creek (just beds of lights laid down beside the raised 680 freeway) and then stayed on 680 when he should have veered right on California 242 just north of Pleasant Hill. He took the Concord Avenue off-ramp — the right street off the wrong freeway — and couldn’t find California Street. Dammit, where the little residential grid was supposed to be laid down, there wasn’t anything at all. Darkness. And beyond, where Concord was supposed to be, was a huge blare of lights that turned out to be an auto dealership with forty acres of used cars for sale. Then he ran out of gas, had to walk half a mile.

Shit, if he’d re-upped when his two years in the army were finished, he’d have been a sergeant by now. If he hadn’t got his ass shot off in the meantime.

It was 9:07 P.M. when he turned off Concord Avenue into the old by-passed residential area on two-block California Street. He missed 1830 on the first drive-through, finally found it to be a low ranch-style plaster affair with a red asphalt shingle roof. The old-fashioned picket fence was almost bursting with roses even prettier than those in Castro Valley.

No garage; a dusty blue Bonneville with a white hardtop was parked in the weedy yard next to a tall elm. A rope hung from a convenient limb, knotted near the end so kids could use it to swing on. Cars were whipping by down on Concord Avenue in an angry blare of horns and headlights. Almost dark, but he could still see the outlines, beyond the old live oaks and the new multiplexes, of the round-topped treeless California hills. The houses would climb them soon, too.

As he started through the weeds toward the front door, the lights went out. He paused. A woman came out, slamming the screen door behind her. She jumped and gasped when she saw him motionless in the yard.

“Jesus, you scared me, man!”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to get hold of Griff, I thought you—”

“Griff?” The dying evening light showed her to be a big, buxom, dark-haired girl in her twenties. She wore skintight slacks over generous thighs; enough nipple poked against her red-and-white-striped T-shirt to show she wore no bra. Buxom was hardly the word. “Who the hell are you?”

“Ballard. You wouldn’t know me, I’m from the city. Griff—”

“Get to hell out of my way,” she said abruptly. She started to push past him. “I’m late for work.”

Ballard put out a detaining hand. “I’m not on the make. I—”

“Keep your paws off me!”

A clawed hand came up at his eyes. Ballard caught her wrist, turned his body sideways in case she tried to knee him, but as soon as she pulled her wrist loose she went right on talking as if there had been no interruption.

“I’m sick of that bastard’s rotten friends sucking around! This is my place now, get it? Next time I’ll slap you with so much fuzz you’ll be wearing stripes before you need a change of socks, believe me. They’re my friends in this town.”

Ballard seemed destined to never finish a sentence. “I’m not a friend of Griffin’s, I’m a private—”

“Buck private, I suppose. Last one Griff brought around was so kinky he wanted me to sit on the edge of the bed so... oh, never mind!”

Ballard stared after her in the near-darkness, then burst out laughing. What else could he do? But he had learned something: the bounteously endowed girl apparently had moved in when Griffin had moved out. Or before. So the house was a rental, and rental properties meant landladies. Somewhere close by, perhaps? Like next door?

Next door it was, a well-kept house that looked pale green in the evening light, with a wood-shingle roof and attractive brown trim. A newly polished Galaxie-500 was parked in front under an evergreen. The woman who identified herself as the owner of 1830 wore gray slacks and a thin white blouse over a mannish frame that went with her sixtyish age. Heavy-rimmed glasses made her eyes owlish. Her name was Emily Tregum.

“Griffin? Him? He left in February, good riddance, six weeks after that car smash he had on Christmas Eve—”

“With the T-Bird?”

“That’s right. They towed it away, should of kept it; but here a month later he had it back, all fixed up.” She nodded her head in tart satisfaction. “Ask me, he’s in jail — I know that’s where he should be. Left owing over two hundred dollars in rent, besides selling all of my furniture from that house. Put an ad right in the newspaper.”

“Do you know anyone who can put me in touch with him?”

She pursed meager lips, shook a finger at him in an oddly inappropriate gesture. “Someone bonded him over that auto wreck, then he jumped six hundred dollars’ bail.” She stopped, then added, “You look like a clean-cut young man, I’ll tell you this. Cheri, the girl who rents from me now, used to know him.”

“I, ah, just missed Cheri.”

“Well, she works right down the street. On Concord Avenue.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “In the topless place.”

Ballard thanked her and turned to leave, then remembered another question. “Has anyone else been around asking about Griffin lately?”

“No,” she said positively. “ ’Less you count the Nigra man was around on, let’s see, Tuesday it was. Told him just what I told you, ’cept about Cheri and all...”

So Bart had been here. More to point to Griffin as the one. He said, “Why didn’t you tell him about Cheri, ma’am?”

“Well, I told you. He was colored. He knew Cheri lives over there alone, he’d be after her, quick as scat. They can’t help it, of course, but... well, he was eyeing me before I shut the door...”

The topless place was on the corner of Concord and Bonifacio, just being redone, so the outside walls were black tarpaper with chicken wire over them, waiting for the plasterers. The abbreviated gravel parking area held twelve autos, foreign and small and sporty except for one bright irridescent blue Continental, a peacock in a chicken coop.

Above the door in fancy neon script was Dukum Inn, with a sign under it, TOPLESS, in big red painted letters, with NOW underneath that in smaller black letters.

Ballard went through the heavy door, leathered and brass-studded on the inside. It was jammed. A lot of couples and even more single men, young, the sort that wear their hair too long and comb it incessantly by the back-bar mirror. In back, where in less frenetic times a shuffleboard would have been, was a stage. On it was a four-man combo, and gyrating wildly in front of them, wearing nothing but brief panties and flying sweat, was Cheri, the girl from 1830. Her bared breasts lived up to their promise under the striped T-shirt.

“What’ll it be, sir?”

“Just a beer.” Ballard didn’t take his eyes from the girl and her heavy jouncing bust. No wonder she was so defensive; in a place like this, a lot of hands would have been reaching for that candy.

“Same price as whiskey, y’know,” warned the bartender absently, staring beyond him at Cheri with complacent lust.

“That’s okay, I’m driving. Ah... how many girls do you have?”

“Just the two. Her an’ Cleo. Ain’t she somethin’? Cheri Tart.”

Ballard opened his mouth, realized it was open, and shut it again. Cheri Tart. How would he cover that in his report? Topless, dying in the city, seemed very big — in several ways — in Concord.

“Griff been around lately?” he asked, very casually.

“Chuck Griffin?” He shook his head slowly, side-to-side, his eyes moving in their sockets so they stayed fixed on the stage. “Not for three, four months, anyway.”

“Hell! I’ve been at sea since the first of the year, just got in. Owe him some money and... Hey!” He let a light dawn in his eye. “Wasn’t he going out with one of these girls here or something? Sure! That girl. Cheri.” He picked up his glass and beer, turned toward a table a foursome was just vacating. “Tell her I’m here with Griff’s twenty bucks. She’ll recognize me.”

Ten minutes later she threaded her way directly to his table, wearing her slacks and T-shirt, barefoot and sullen-faced, slapping away eager hands. Behind her the combo was belting out, of all things, a bad rendition of the old Johnny Cash “Ring of Fire.” She pulled out the chair across from Ballard and flopped in it with a huge sigh.

“What the hell, it’s a living,” he told her discontented face. He laid a twenty on the table.

She laughed suddenly, then tapped the bill with a long red fingernail. In a moment of intense sexual fantasy, Ballard’s imagination felt the fingernail running languidly down his bare spine.

“This doesn’t buy you anything,” she said.

“What I said at the house was the truth, Cheri. I’m not on the make. I’m just trying to get in touch with Griffin.”

“A sweet guy,” she said unexpectedly. Her eyes were very clear under their tremendous overlay of mascara. “On the sauce too heavy, but a sweet guy. Gentle. And square, y’know? A real thing about his mother. Sometimes I think he dug me because I’ve got these big titties.” She put a hand under one of them and flopped it once, casually, as if it were a cow’s udder. “Like, the big mother image or something, y’know?”

“What was all this about kinky—”

“That was the other guy. Griff, he was strictly missionary-style.” She held her joined hands out, palms together as if in prayer but with the hands horizontal, not vertical, with the left on the bottom. She began rocking the right by raising the heel while the fingertips remained pressed to those of the left. It was almost shockingly graphic. “Like that, y’know? Always. Me Tarzan, you Jane.” Her eyes got a faraway look. “But a sweet guy.”

The combo paused after scattered clapping. Then a rebel yell went up as Cleo appeared.

“If he was so sweet, what happened?”

“He just took off.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. We had a big fight over this other guy—”

“The kinky one?”

“That’s him.” She suddenly shuddered. “Tall, good-looking guy. Griff brought him in to see me dance. February eighth it was, I remember it ’cause it was one month to the day after I moved in with Griff. Anyway, we all got loaded between gigs. At one o’clock the three of us went back up to the house and Griff went out for a bottle. This clown dragged me right into the bedroom like he owned me, y’know?” Her eyes were indignant. “Tore the pantyhose right off me, four-ninety-eight a pair, and you know what he wanted? To look up me. Honest. With a flashlight.”

Ballard had trouble keeping his face straight. “You let him?”

“No. I kicked him — where it hurts, even if you’re barefooted. Then I ran out. I slept over to my girl friend’s where I roomed before I went in with Griff. He came over the next morning, Griff, and I really lit into him. This guy came on so strong, I thought he had to have been told I was an easy lay or something, y’know? Real kinky guy. Griff felt terrible about it, he had no idea. Said he was gonna do something about it...”

Ballard nodded. “So when I showed up tonight—”

“Yeah. I thought, just like the other one.” She put out her hand impulsively. “I’m not that bitchy usually, honest.”

“What I don’t understand, if Griff was such a nice guy, why he just took off like that.”

“Yeah, how do you like that?” Cheri asked broodily, eyes dark with remembered injustice. “The next day, after we fought and made up so I thought everything was fine, he goes off to work and just keeps going. Walks out without a word. And then the next week guys start coming in, hauling out the furniture right from under me! Honest. Said they’d bought it from Griff, left checks made out to him. Finally, like three weeks or a month later — maybe early March or something — here comes this phone call from him.”

“Phone call?” asked Ballard almost sharply.

“From a bar somewhere,” she nodded. “He’s about half shit-face, y’know? The music so loud I can hardly hear him. Says he’s sorry it didn’t work out, would I, like, mail these checks for the furniture to him. I was pretty sore at the time, y’know, but I got something else going for myself now. Might even marry him, big deal.”

Ballard rubbed his jaw, hard. He said cautiously, “Ah... you wouldn’t remember that address you mailed the checks to, would you?”

“No. But I got it up to the house. I’ll run up and get it for you on my next break.”

The address was 1545 Midfield Road. In San Jose.

Ballard felt it was worth his twenty bucks.