Final Notice

Seven

Giselle Marc paused with the coffeepot in the narrow doorway of the front office, thinking to herself that there was a lot of diverse human talent, oddly channeled, in that room.

Over by the doorway to Kathy’s office, Kathy and Bart Heslip had their heads together. Almost surely telling dirty jokes; neither ever told them to anyone else.

Behind Jane Goldson’s desk sat Larry Ballard, good-looking in a windblown, outdoorsy way — despite the fact that the closest he ever willfully got to the rural scene was abalone-diving up the coast on free weekends.

O’Bannon, slumped in his chair with his topcoat still on, studying the new assignments he’d just collected from his In box. Three drinks ahead of everybody else, of course. Started as a collector for a jewelry firm when he’d gotten out of the Navy, had gone with Walter’s Auto Detectives in 3.955 and, like Kathy, left for the formation of DKA in 1964. Chronically drinking too much, just coasting along on experience these days — but still the best man they had when he bore down.

“Who wants coffee?”

Ballard saw the pot in her hand. “You mean that’s brewed coffee?

“Specially for you, Larry.”

And what about Giselle Marc, she thought as she poured and passed Pream and sugar. Twenty-six, the same age as Ballard but with five more years in the game than him. Started out typing skip letters for the just-formed DKA at eighteen, working after school and summers until she’d gotten her B.A. and M.A. in history from SF State, then coming to work full time.

What compulsion did she share with the others that kept her here instead of teaching, as she once had so confidently expected to do?

Frankly, who gave a damn? She loved it, and she was good at it.

The stairwell door slammed. Kearny’s heavy footsteps came up the uncarpeted wooden stairs. He entered the crowded office stripping off his topcoat.

“We’re all fired?” suggested O’Bannon.

“Try to ram another expense account like that last one down my throat, O’B, and you might be.” He looked over at Kathy. “What’s the latest word on Ed Dorsey?”

“Still critical, but they have hopes.”

“Anybody been to see him yet?”

Giselle cut in: “His wife won’t let us, Dan. She told the hospital no visitors from DKA, none at all.”

“Beautiful,” snorted Kearny.

Same old crap, DKA getting blamed for the garbage, as if they dumped it instead of poking through it. He sat down on the edge of the desk opposite the hall doorway so he could see them all. He nodded his heavy graying head. “You all know what happened to Ed last night. The police don’t like it, but because they can’t prove anything they’ll have to go along with the theory that he was attacked by mistake. We want them to keep thinking that for a while.”

“You’re saying it wasn’t just a mugging?” demanded Heslip in a surprised voice.

“It was a setup; I was supposed to come out of the office between five-thirty and five-forty and get into the station wagon. They hit Ed as soon as he opened my car door because they thought he was me.”

From the corner of his eye he saw Giselle open her mouth as the implications sank in, but he went right on without giving her a chance to speak. “We have four places to dig at the moment. Chandra. The AVP in charge of Auto Contracts at Golden Gate Trust, Pete Gilmartin. The VP in charge of Personal Loans, also at GG Trust, Arthur Nucci. And an East Bay drayage firm called Padilla Trucking.”

“Can you sort of explain who and why?” asked Kathy Onoda.

“Larry walked in between Chandra and a payoff man with a fistful of hundred-dollar bills. She didn’t know about the bills when she came to redeem, stormed out vowing to have the car back inside an hour. An hour later I got two phone calls. Golden Gate Trust told me to give the car back to her, paid-up or not. The other told me to keep looking over my shoulder. Then Chandra came back knowing all about the money, and mentioned in passing that she’d made a phone call.”

“To whoever pressured the bank and threatened you, obviously,” said O’Bannon. “But why the strong-arm stuff after you’d already given her the car back?”

“That’s one of the things we have to find out.”

O’B briskly nodded his gleaming red head. “How do you want to split up the work, Dan?”

“You and Kathy are out of it. But you’ll have to cover for the others, so I wanted—”

“What the hell?” O’B demanded angrily.

“Married,” said Kearny. “Both of you.”

Everyone paused to think that one over. Kathy broke it first, with a high tinkling laugh like the formalized giggling of geisha girls in Japanese movies. It was nothing at all like her southern-slut laugh.

“When did you get so cautious, Dan?”

“Benny Nicoletti of Police Intelligence was around. He told me without telling me, if you get what I mean, that the boy Bart laid down — Garofolo — is a syndicate enforcer. Long pedigree back East, lots of arrests and no convictions. I don’t want anyone on the case who’s vulnerable because of family.”

He said nothing of the fact that he was married, with three kids. It was an inescapable hazard: Kearny was DKA.

“What about Corinne?” asked Heslip.

“After tonight, contact her by phone only. Don’t go near her.”

“Whooie!” he exclaimed in his detachable accent. “That high-yaller gonna take this chile’s head right off she hears ’bout dis hyar dang’r’us ’ssignment.”

“Tell her Dan has you down in L.A. doing a flooring check on a warehouse full of color TVs,” Kathy said callously.

“Ah, so, you ver’ smart Japonee girr.”

“Now lissen hyar, Kingfish...”

“The floor show over?” demanded Kearny.

They subsided abruptly.

Ballard had been listening rather than talking. This was really going to be something! Really doing detective work, really digging. The first case he had really dug on had been a gypsy fortuneteller. That was when he’d realized he was a detective.

“Where’s the tie-in with this East Bay trucking firm?” he asked.

“Bart’s boyfriend works for them. Garofolo.”

“Worked.” Heslip laughed suddenly. “When I hits ’em, man, they stays hit!”

Ballard made a rude noise. Kearny asked if there were any questions. No questions. No requests for handgun permits; these people were professionals who knew you only wanted a gun when you were completely sure you’d be willing to use it.

“I’ve got a spaghetti feed laid on at Rocca’s,” said Kearny. He added to O’B, “With lots of dago red.” As they began reaching for their coats, he stopped them once again. “All of you keep a sharp eye on your own back trail. If you cut someone else’s tracks, let me know right away. Right away.”

Giselle walked the two blocks to Rocca’s with Kearny. “You don’t really think Pete set you up, do you, Dan?”

Kearny shrugged. “Him or Nucci — or somebody in between, like a secretary.”

“I can’t believe Pete...” She stopped. If Gilmartin hadn’t been married, with a couple of kids, she might... “Do you know exactly what it is we’re trying to find?”

“Connections. Anything that sticks out, doesn’t fit, doesn’t make sense.”

“Like a sixty-year-old dancer, who can barely pay her studio rent, driving a ten-thousand-dollar car?”

“Exactly like that,” said Kearny.