Dead Skip

Fifteen

At 1:45 P.M., just as Ballard sank a hesitant tooth into his soggy cheeseburger in Concord, Dan Kearny parked his station wagon on Main Street in Martinez. He still hadn’t been able to raise Ballard on the radio. Field agents working addresses in a constricted area were in and out of their cars like yo-yos; eventually he would catch him. Meanwhile, he had a pretty good idea of what Ballard was doing.

Kearny’s first stop on reaching the East Bay had been, like Ballard’s, the Concord police department. The inelegant rear in the striped hotpants had long since wobbled out — to a ten-buck parking tag, a fact to warm Ballard’s heart — but the freckled desk sergeant still was available. He repeated his information to Kearny, and added, on request, an excellent verbal of Ballard.

“You should have been a cop,” Kearny dead-panned.

He went around the corner to the municipal court, which Ballard had missed. A short hall ended in wide double doors leading to the courtroom of the presiding judge. On one of them was a typed notice dated February 17, detailing acceptable dress for court appearances. Barefoot was not acceptable, nor were hotpants. Long hair and beards carried no interdictions short, it could be assumed, of nesting sparrows.

Kearny went back down the hall to a Dutch door with the top half open on a room containing four women and a great many file-jammed open-face cabinets. The ladies were huddled by the windows, gabbing.

“Where do I find out about docketings?” Kearny asked.

“Right here.”

“Griffin, Charles M.”

One of the women found the applicable clipboard and, with another, checked it. Both of them were placid as cattle, but Kearny evinced no impatience. He was in the field, working. You kept going, you kept digging, until you got there. It was as simple as that.

“No record here, sir.”

“Has anyone else been around asking about Griffin within the last three hours?”

She immediately became official. “We couldn’t give out that sort of information.” Her face could, however, and did. No.

“How about criminal docketings?”

“Why didn’t you say so?” she demanded with considerable asperity. She extended a jiggly-fleshed arm, the sort seen so often on farm wives at summer church socials in the Midwest. “Across the hall, at Traffic.”

Kearny thanked her, but she had already returned to the gossip. Across the hall was a set of double windows and a counter. Two Mexican women, one holding a very loud baby, were paying a traffic fine; they laid their dollar bills down on the counter separately, as if each were made of fine Spanish lace. A hard-faced man in khaki, with a black eye, was losing an argument about a warrant for unpaid moving violations with an equally hard-faced deputy.

Kearny’s deputy obviously was just waiting out his pension, which meant he was cooperative, good-natured, unhurried, efficient.

“Griffin, Charles M. Docketed to Judge Bailey Johnson’s court at nine-thirty a.m. on Tuesday, June thirteenth. Drunk driving, violation of the right-of-way.”

“You know the case personally?” asked Kearny in apparent idleness.

“He jumped bail back in February, Gerald Coogan Bail Bonds, 913 Main Street, Martinez, had to forfeit six bills bail. This clown’s been in three HBD accidents since he bought that T-Bird last October. When they finally get him in front of the judge, he’ll lose his license, period-the-end. Johnson had a daughter put in the hospital a few years ago by a drunk driver, he loves to see those babies turn up in his court.”

Ballard hadn’t been here, either. Kearny paused before getting into the Ford wagon. Three had-been-drinking accidents in five months. That California Street landlady could be right; he could be in jail, probably the county jug over in Martinez. Ballard, with the Wanda Moher lead he’d gotten from the police, but without the bail-bond lead obtained by Kearny here, would first check Wanda and any leads developed from her before hitting Martinez.

So Kearny would check on the jail and the bail bondsman first.

Martinez was an old town, almost a company town, created and sustained as a deepwater port for tankers coming up from the Bay to off-load their cargoes of crude at the Shell Oil Cracking Plant. The plant itself looked like a science-fiction city: great vertical towers and stacks, tall and lean and industrial against the round-topped hills beyond which lay Carquinez Straits. When Kearny entered town on one-way Howard Street, he could smell the dark, intense reek of oil through the open window. Not so distasteful when your job depended on it. The old story. Bucks.

The Contra Costa county jail was right across the street from the new twelve-story administration building, carefully decorated with palmetto palms, which was remarkably out of phase with the old sleepy town. The jail was the sort they had built when the town had been young: covering a whole city block, satisfyingly squat, dark, and of ugly gray stone. The windows were narrow barred slits.

Kearny went up concrete steps, through open battered metal doors painted to resemble wood, to stop at the heavily barred cage. Signs fixed to the mesh laid out visiting hours, the fact that all guns had to be checked at the desk, the fact that ex-cons could not visit until six months after their release, and that ex-felons could not visit at all.

“What can I do for you?”

He was an athletic-looking young deputy with a large soup-strainer mustache. Kearny asked if Charles M. Griffin was a guest there, receiving hospitality for his tax dollars. He was not. On the way out, Kearny passed another deputy, hard but not hard-faced, bringing in a handcuffed prisoner with red-rimmed eyes, the twitches, and the sniffles. Coming down off a high, off the white horse, off the big H, down to brutal reality: a six-by-eight cell and screaming cold turkey until he admitted habituation and was transferred to a hospital wing.

Kearny U-turned back to Main, found a metered space in front of Snooks Jewelers, walked back to 913. It was on the main drag of a business district still flavored with small-town America. A few blocks away, Main dead-ended in a large green wooded hill rising up against pale-blue California sky. Gerald Coogan Bail Bonds was a narrow stone-fronted building with dark-green vertical-slat blinds.

Behind a counter inside was a desk with three telephones and a gray-haired woman with thick ankles. The lower half of her face said Grandma; Kearny could have cut himself on what the upper half said.

“Is Mr. Coogan in?”

She made a gesture toward the partition behind the desk which hid the enclosed interview cubicles. “With a client. I’m Missus.”

“That’s fine.” Kearny laid his card on the counter, the card with investigations, thefts, embezzlements, repossessions, skip-tracing, collections blocked in the upper left-hand corner, licensed and bonded, state and city, nationwide affiliates in the upper right. He said, “We’re trying to get a line on an ex-client of yours named Charles M. Griffin.”

She made a two-word comment about Griffin and his mother that was probably more ritual than fact, then added, “Hell, we’ve had a warrant out on him since February; he burned us for six bills.”

Kearny shook his head in bogus commiseration. Bail bondsmen usually got more than adequate security; one of them getting burned was like a cat sitting twice on a hot stove burner. It just hardly ever happened. He liked it.

“How’d he get into you for the cash?”

“He knew—” she stopped abruptly, then shrugged very casually. “Favor for a friend — you know.”

“What about his lawyer? Can’t he help you?”

“Hawkley? Hell, he’s...” She stopped again. “Hell, he probably knows less about Griffin than we do.”

Which Kearny doubted. Lawyers always knew more about their clients than anyone else, and an old-line bail bondsman like Ma Coogan would know that very well. Something was a bit out of focus in the relationships here, which made him ask for Hawkley’s address. This was rewarded with another appreciable pause before she figured out there was no casual way she could refuse.

“Wayne Hawkley, 1942 Colfax Street. In Concord.”

On the way back to Concord he tried, again unsuccessfully, to raise Ballard. He was looking forward to Wayne Hawkley, who was almost surely the friend the Coogans had been doing a favor for when they had gone bail for Griffin without any collateral.

Kearny was waiting at the angle-intersection where Concord Avenue became Galindo Street, behind a truck trailer making a left-hand turn, when Ballard turned right into Mount Diablo Street off Willow Pass Road a block away. The truck blocked Kearny’s vision; when the light changed he followed its left turn into Willow Pass. He didn’t look down Mount Diablo Street when he passed that intersection, because he was checking street signs for Colfax Street, so he didn’t see Ballard’s car. If he had, they would have teamed up, might never have caught up with Charles M. Griffin, might never have laid the blocks to the murderer who had struck down Bart Heslip. It was that close.

The law offices of Wayne E. Hawkley, 1942 Colfax Street, were in a one-story cinder block building with red-brick fronting, plate-glass windows with the inevitable aluminum frames, and tan drapes drawn against the sun.

Kearny parked across the street at 2:12 P.M. Inside, a Spanish-American and a Caucasian waited patiently for attention. Neither looked prosperous, but the office looked prosperous enough to make up for it. There was an immense, bare, very expensive hardwood desk, empty, and a smaller, more functional secretary’s desk set at right angles to it behind a partition. Kearny put one of his plain cards on the secretary’s desk.

“Mr. Hawkley is busy, sir. And these other gentlemen—”

“I’ll wait.”

“If I could have some idea what it is concerning, sir...”

“I’ll wait,” said Kearny again, wondering, by the secretary’s manner, whether he should have genuflected upon entering.

The secretary was lean and dark and intense-looking, wearing a dark-brown blouse and a beige jumper that showed a lot of slender leg. There was a hint of bafflement and irritation behind her rimless glasses. “Whatever you wish, sir.”

It was twenty minutes before she paused at the head of the passageway behind the big empty desk with Kearny’s business card in her hand. “That way, sir.” The distaste in her voice was unmistakable.

She led him into a strictly functional air-conditioned office where an early-thirties type in shirt sleeves was reading a brief. He was one of the “new lawyers” so popularized by television: hirsute, goateed, wearing a loud striped shirt and a wide tie like a slice of pizza — concerned, involved, idealistic, shallow and glib.

He looked up with carefully calculated irritation. “What is it, Madeline? I told you I was too busy—”

“This is a Mr. Kearny. He insisted—”

“Yes, Dan Kearny,” said Kearny heartily. “Mr. Hawkley?”

“I’m Norbert Franks, Mr. Hawkley’s assistant. I screen—”

“Uh-uh,” said Kearny.

“Huh?”

People didn’t talk to him that way. People, Kearny had an idea, didn’t even talk to Madeline that way. “Pull up the lower jaw before you drool on that pretty tie, sonny.” He turned back to the girl, his voice thick and heavy. “Let’s quit playing around and have Hawkley out here.”

“Private eye. Big deal,” sneered Franks. “A dime a dozen...”

Kearny turned back to him. The voice trailed off under that icy gray gaze; finally his hand began fidgeting with the slice of pizza and his eyes dropped to the brief. It wasn’t his day. The girl started off with angry strides. So silently that she didn’t know he was there until she had opened the next door down the hall, Kearny fell in right behind her.

“Thanks, honey,” he said, sliding by her into the room.

She yelped in dismay. A stooped, very tall man in a three-hundred-dollar gray-blue pinstripe was just biting the end from a cigar. His battered old hardwood rolltop dated from the turn of the century, as did he. Clear blue eyes, much younger than the face, came up to meet Kearny’s gray ones through old-fashioned spectacles and the first wreath of fragrant smoke. There was no surprise in the eyes. His thin hair was black enough to be dyed but probably wasn’t.

“Mr. Kearny, sir. A pleasure, believe me.”

His hand was rough and gnarled, as if he had chopped a lot of cordwood in his day. Kearny sat down across the desk from him. “You must shove one hell of a lot of bail-bond clients their way.”

A glint appeared in the blue eyes. Kearny could almost see the mind behind them working it through. Almost. Hawkley had a thin, lined face that probably hadn’t given anything away since 1927, the year a framed certificate on the wall said he had passed the California State Bar.

“That boy Norbert has a big mouth on him, ain’t he?” The ain’t would once have been deliberate, something for the juries that had become habitual.

“And a lousy bedside manner. If he’s your son learning the business, buy him a shoestore.”

The old man chuckled, opened a lower desk drawer while waving away the secretary still standing in the doorway. “Shut it behind you, Maddy.”

She shot a look of pure hatred at Kearny, tried to slam the door peevishly behind her, only to have it yanked right out of her hand by the pneumatic closer. “Goddamn!” she said in a positively venomous voice.

Hawkley had produced from the drawer a bottle of Wild Turkey and a pair of shot glasses. Kearny said, “I’ll give her two hundred a month more than she gets here.”

“Wouldn’t be worth it to her, not with the commute. She likes a tennis lunch.” Pride entered his voice. “She’s my granddaughter.”

“Congratulations.”

“Norbert’s my sister’s boy. Plumb awful, ain’t he? Wants to be one of these new poverty lawyers, I figger he’s going to make it the hard way. Cheers.”

The Wild Turkey went down neat; bourbon like that needed no chaser, not even any comment. Hawkley sighed and capped the bottle.

“Charles M. Griffin. What do you want to know about him?”

Kearny considered for a moment. Coogan, the bail bondsman, had phoned up Hawkley that a private investigator was on the way. And Hawkley had tried to give him the run-around. Why? Something to do with Griffin? Doubtful.

“His current address.”

“Can’t help you,” said Hawkley promptly.

“He probably assaulted one of our men with intent to commit murder on Wednesday A.M.,” said Kearny. “The police read it as an accident and we haven’t tried to make them think any different. Yet.”

Hawkley was watching him thoughtfully. “Meaning?”

“I’m personally taking this wherever I have to take it.”

“You’re big?” said Hawkley abruptly.

“Big enough. Fifteen field agents out of San Francisco and Oakland covering the city, the Peninsula, East Bay and Marin. Nine branch offices from Eureka to Long Beach. Three others in the corporations fully licensed besides myself.”

He added the last deliberately; three other valid licenses meant that anyone with enough clout in Sacramento to get Kearny’s pulled still wouldn’t stop DKA from operating.

Hawkley cleared his throat; the message had gotten through. “Chuck Griffin is all you’re after?”

“No wooden horses,” Kearny assured him.

“Damn!” exclaimed the old man regretfully. “I still can’t help you, and I ain’t sure you’ll believe that. Chuck Griffin’s daddy was one of my first clients back in ’27. An improvident man, died broke in a car wreck in ’53. Or was it ’54? I felt bad when Chuck burned Coogan on that bail money, after I sort of rammed him down their throats as a client.” He laughed dryly. “Not too bad, of course.” He depressed a button on his squawk box. “Maddy, get me that Mount Diablo Street address on Griffin.”

Kearny felt a flicker of excitement; the DKA file showed no Mount Diablo Street address.

Madeline’s rather snotty tones came on. “That’s 1377, Mr. Hawkley. On a letter returned to us as unknown this address on March thirteenth this year.”

“That’s all I’ve got, Mr. Kearny. Our letter to Chuck was forwarded from the California Street address, finally came back here. I ain’t heard from Chuck since February. I sent Norbert out to Mount Diablo Street, they’d never heard of Chuck. ’Course, Norbert...”

“Yeah.” Kearny stood up. A hell of an intriguing old scoundrel, but he was a riddle Kearny didn’t have to solve. “A pleasure to do business with you, sir.”

“And with you.” Hawkley also stood. He was a good six-three; he probably didn’t weigh any more than the detective’s compact 170. “I trust my Wild Turkey wasn’t wasted.”

“I’m a pro, Hawkley. I only get curious when I’m paid to.”

“Would there were more of us in this sinful world,” sighed the old lawyer piously.