Dead Skip

Fourteen

When Ballard had hit the East Bay that morning, he hadn’t known that Kearny would be in the field before noon. He didn’t know anything about closing jaws, or care. He’d spent the drive over picking at the deadline, only fifteen hours away, and at the fact that he was no closer to Griffin than he had ever been. Another thing that niggled: he had forgotten to mention either to Kearny or in his report that the T-Bird had been in a wreck in December. Not that it made much difference; the car had been on the street since then.

Was Kearny going to take him off the case tonight after the deadline passed, if he hadn’t turned Griffin by that time? Then Ballard would have to quit DKA and go on his own. Especially after last night with Corinne. The only way he’d ever square things with her was to have the son of a bitch standing beside the bed in handcuffs when Bart woke up. If Bart woke up. Dammit, Bart had to wake up.

And meanwhile, he still had today. Had to think the way Kearny would think, work the leads the way Kearny would work them. He still remembered Kearny on the Mayfield case, when Ballard had been with DKA for only a month, taking apart a welfare worker named Vikki Goodrich to get an address. And later, after Jocelyn Mayfield had killed herself and Ballard had wanted to quit the detective business, going after Ballard the same way.

What will you do now, Ballard — go home and cry into your pillow? She’s going to be dead for a long, long time.

What would he do if Bart died? Or ended up with a fifty-card deck?

He was doing it. Running down the bastard responsible.

The Concord police department and municipal court shared quarters at Willow Pass Road and Parkside Avenue. Ballard passed the Dukum Inn en route. In daylight it looked old and shrunken and dispirited, like an aging swinger getting up in the morning with his teeth still in the water glass. In front of the white-plaster court building were spaces reserved for police and sheriff’s deputies, and a few green fifteen-minute meters for people paying parking fines. Ballard U-turned to a one-hour meter across the street. Since Emily Tregum had suggested Griffin might be in jail, he had to check.

The desk sergeant was red-headed and Ballard’s age, with freckles on his nose and the backs of his hands; he should have used Scope that morning.

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t give out arrest records here. I would suggest you try at the Contra Costa county jail over in Martinez. If this Griffin is in jail there now, they’ll tell you.”

“Do you have any records of an auto accident that involved Griffin last Christmas Eve?”

A girl wearing hair curlers and very hot hotpants came in to lean on the counter next to Ballard, unabashedly listening to them. She was twenty pounds overweight for even lukewarm hotpants.

“This was in Concord?” asked the cop.

“I think so.”

Coming back with a folder a few minutes later, the desk sergeant veered over to the far end of the counter from the overweight girl.

“Nosy little drip,” he said in a cheerfully quiet voice when Ballard joined him. “December twenty-fourth, a two-car accident with a vehicle driven by a Miss Wanda Moher.”

“You have an address on her?”

“Let’s see, a... 3-6-8-1 Willow Pass Road, Concord.”

“Thanks a lot, Officer.” Ballard started to turn away, then remembered to ask, “Was anyone cited in that?”

“Your friend Griffin. Drunk driving, violation-of-right-of-way. His trial was scheduled for last February eleventh; what the outcome was I don’t know.”

As Ballard went out the door, the cop already was turning to the overweight, underdressed girl, automatically reaching under the counter for a complaint form. In one of the reserved-for-police spaces was a maroon and white Mustang with the driver’s window open and the key in the ignition. Ballard repressed a shudder. She was going to make someone a dreadful wife one of these days.

The Hacienda Apartments were double-tiered around an open inner court, like a motel, California ersatz and instant stylish, individualized as canned martinis. Across Willow Pass Road, towering far beyond the intersecting patterns of TV aerials and high power lines, were the serrated smog-dimmed outlines of Mount Diablo. Ballard wondered what it had been like here when it was only rolling empty golden hills.

The mailboxes were set against the oh-so-rustic redwood slat fence which shielded the fishbowl-sized swimming pool. Wanda Moher was not listed. He found a door in the fence under a sign reading Manager, went through. Manager seemed at first to be a trio of yapping miniature poodles; then a birdlike woman in shorts with desperately skinny yet flaccid legs appeared behind them in the screened doorway. She chirped at them, cawed at Ballard.

“Wanda Moher moved out three days ago.” She craned over his head at the second tier of apartments across the court. “Eighteen-C, two over from the head of the stairs. She came in half an hour ago to get the rest of her stuff, she might still be there.”

Exteriors were pale-pink stucco with red-tiled roofs; interiors were bland as oatmeal, computer-designed so everything was built in except the tenants. Wanda was a very short, quite pretty girl who could not have weighed over ninety pounds, standing in the middle of the littered room with the dazed look of a homeowner after the fire engines have departed. Her straight nose and long straight upper lip gave her a surprisingly rabbitlike face.

“I’ve never met a real detective before,” she said, “but I love Agatha Christie...”

Ballard, who only read Richard Stark, said he was looking for a Mr. Charles M. Griffin. The transformation in Wanda Moher was startling. Her eyes flashed as much as a rabbit’s eyes can flash.

“I hope he’s in trouble good! Anything I can do to help you...”

“Start with the accident,” he suggested.

It was only 11:30 in the morning, Christmas Eve morning to be exact, and she was driving down to Oakland for some last-minute shopping. Her mother... Anyway, here came Griffin, completely drunk, zooming out of this parking lot beside a bar, and...

“That would be the Dukum Inn?” Ballard asked, on a hunch.

“Gee, it’s got a reputation with you fellows, huh?” Then her eyes got very big and she nodded wisely. “Of course! Topless!”

Her car had sustained over four hundred dollars’ worth of damage — the subject’s third such offense in less than four months. The police, she said, had told her they were determined to get him off the road this time.

“Did he lose his license at the February court date?”

“He never showed up. His lawyer got some sort of continuance for more time or something until next month. But the man who put up the money for his bond or whatever it was had to pay up. In cash.”

“Do you know who that would be?” asked Ballard.

She shrugged, momentarily outlining small, very pointed breasts under her pale pastel blouse. “Maybe my insurance agent would know. His name is Harvey E. Wyman and he’s right here in Concord.”

At 1820 Mount Diablo Boulevard, as a matter of fact. She knew because it was right next door to Moneyfast Finance, where her mother had a loan. She could be reached in future at her mother’s house at 1799 LaCalle Street, in that subdivision out beyond...

One-fifteen. And breakfast had been a cup of the DKA office coffee, which always tasted as if someone had brewed a dead rat in it. And of course they’d been out of Pream. They were always out of Pream. Somebody, probably Kearny, kept an empty jar there to fool you, but Ballard could never remember ever having found anything in it. Unless that was where they kept the rat between pots.

Since 1820 Mount Diablo Boulevard was less than three miles from Miss Moher’s non-stop mouth, he would check it before lunch. He doubted if the insurance agent would know very much — his name, maybe, if he was having a good day — but it was worth a stop.

It was a very bright and sunny two-person office, decorated in primary colors. Wyman’s empty desk was in the back by the wide picture window. At a much smaller desk in the center of the room a pleasant-faced middle-aged woman was talking on the phone. When she was finished, Ballard learned that Mr. Wyman was expected back within the hour. She would not feel right about going into Miss Moher’s file without Mr. Wyman’s knowledge and permission. He did understand?

Ballard understood. “I’ll grab a sandwich and be back in — oh, thirty, forty minutes.”

That would be fine. There was a coffee shop around the corner on Concord Boulevard. The cheeseburger and fries he had were so incredibly bad — even the pickle was soggy — that he was partially prepared for the coffee. But only partially. After tasting it, he really expected to find a tadpole in the bottom of his cup.

When he caught himself falling asleep over it, he went out to the car to bring in the Griffin file to review. A hole became immediately apparent. He’d forgotten to check at the Concord courthouse when he had been at the police department. He would go back there after he’d finished with Wyman, find out who the bail bondsman was who’d gotten burned, get the name of Griffin’s lawyer.

After that, to Martinez to check the county jail. Drop in at the Dukum Inn to find out about the accident in December. Maybe get the name of the garage where the T-Bird had been towed; that really ought to be in the file even though it was meaningless information.

And after that...

Ballard shook his head. He was starting to feel a little panicky. About twelve hours left, he was really just making motions, spinning his wheels. He didn’t have anywhere else to go.

But that did remind him to stop at his car and call KFS 499, Oakland Control, so they could call Giselle over in S.F. Yes, the San Jose field agent had been out to Midfield Road this morning. None of the neighbors had ever seen the subject around the address, but a T-Bird, red with a white hardtop, had been parked in the garage for several weeks in February and March. Nobody remembered the license, of course.

The tract home had been rented from the realty office by phone, paid for by a cashier’s check depositing six months’ rent in a lump sum. The transmitter of the check: Charles M. Griffin. The six months would be up on August 10, which meant it had been rented on February 10. A day before the court date he hadn’t shown up for, according to Wanda Moher. San Jose had done a hell of a job on short notice. But what did it add up to? What was bugging him?

Ballard got out of the car, then paused. Car. That was it. Why had Griffin quit paying for the T-Bird? He’d had plenty of cash, siphoned from JRS Garage. Why rent a house in San Jose to store the T-Bird in the garage with money he could have put into the car payments?

Harvey E. Wyman was red-faced and jovial and mid-thirties, and should have taken up jogging the year before. He was also, unlike so many small insurance agents Ballard had met, very sharp. Very sharp indeed.

“Oh, I remember that Griffin accident, all right. Much better than I would like to. Three hundred bucks damage to his car, over four hundred to Wanda’s...”

“Who was his insurance company?”

Wyman looked up from the Moher file the secretary had laid on his desk. “He was driving without any. Our people had to eat the loss on Wanda’s car.”

“They’re suing, of course?”

“We’ve never been able to find him to serve him.” He went back to the file. “Jumped bail in February, didn’t show in municipal court...”

“What address did you show on him at that time?”

“Eighteen-hundred-something California Street, here in town. But I have a later one than that—”

“Midfield Road in San Jose? We have that. We—”

“No, this is here in Concord...” Ballard straightened up, his heart pumping. Wyman nodded. “Here it is. You see, I have my own repair work done at the same garage that fixed up the T-Bird after that December smash. They worked on it again last month...”

Ballard snapped, “He was sure it was the same car?”

“Oh, sure. He showed me the work order; same license number. The address was 1377 Mount Diablo Street...”

Ballard was halfway across the office, throwing a hurried “Thanks” over his shoulder, when Wyman called him back. “I rushed a process server out there, but hell, the people living there had never heard of Griffin.”

“They could have been lying—”

Wyman shrugged. “I’ve used this guy for years, he’s tough to lie to. It’s a family: husband, wife, couple of kids. No connection with Griffin at all. I guess he just picked the address out of a phone book.”

Hell, it had to have some meaning, Ballard thought. Mount Diablo Street, as opposed to Boulevard, was just a block away, 1377 just a few blocks west. It was a live one, he could feel it was a live one. He left rubber in front of Harvey E. Wyman’s office.