Finnegan's week

CHAPTER 21

Nell Salter had trouble going to sleep that night because of confusion, and mixed feelings concerning the neurotic cop, Fin Finnegan.

Bobbie Ann Doggett had difficulty sleeping because of her raging blood-alcohol level, and her astonishment at having met a gentleman in the state of California.

Jules Temple couldn’t sleep because he was furious at the notion that he was losing control of his own life, and at his dismal sexual performance with Lou Ross. But finally, he blamed his failure on Lou’s deteriorating body, and took a sleeping pill.

Fin Finnegan slept badly because of a plethora of emotions that involved Bobbie Ann Doggett, Nell Salter, his three ex-wives, and all three sisters. He had a momentary rum-soaked fantasy about living the remainder of his days in a monastery out near Borrego Springs, until he remembered that he’d still be a forty-five-year-old monk.

Abel Durazo was awake longer than the few minutes it usually took, because of the extreme violence he’d seen in the bikers’ bar. And also because tomorrow he was going to collect six thousand dollars from Soltero. Abel had never had so much money at one time in his entire life.

Shelby Pate couldn’t sleep at all. It was mostly because he’d snorted so much meth he was totally amped, and when he was like this he did all sorts of strange things, such as going out to his girlfriend’s one-car garage and trying to take his truck engine apart and put it back together. Sometimes when he was wired he’d work on his Harley in the front yard under a droplight, or he might initiate a frenzy of hedge clipping until it looked like a herd of starving goats had raided the yard.

When he got like this, his neighbors would scream at him and threaten to call the cops, but they were tweakers too. They knew that Shelby was vibrating from having done a teener of go-fast, and that he’d chill pretty soon. Or else he’d flat-line, and they wouldn’t mind that either.

There was another reason though, that Shelby Pate couldn’t sleep, and it had nothing to do with the twitching and jumping and oscillating caused by the cringe. It had to do with the visit by Nell Salter and Fin Finnegan. It had to do with Shelby learning for the first time that they were hauling a very dangerous pesticide called Guthion, and that such a load should’ve been manifested for disposal outside California.

When Shelby had got home from the bikers’ bar-long after the paramedics had hauled away the bearded biker with his guts kicked out-Shelby had crept into his girlfriend’s closet and retrieved his leather jacket, the one he’d worn last Friday night. He removed both manifests from the pocket of the jacket and read them. The material from North Island was properly manifested for disposal at a Los Angeles refinery. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and carefully read the manifest from Southbay Agricultural Supply.

On line 11-a of the State of California Health and Welfare Agency form, the proper shipping name, hazard class, and I.D. number did not list a waste poison mixture of Guthion. It was listed as “waste flammable liquid,” and specifically described as “weed oil and kerosene.”

And on line 9, which required the name and address of the disposal site, the facility listed was a refinery in Los Angeles where Shelby and Abel had often hauled ordinary waste. There was no mention of a disposal site in Texas.

Shelby folded the manifest and put it inside a plastic sandwich bag. Then he hid the plastic bag inside one of his spare boots and took that pair of boots out to the garage. After that, Shelby fired up the power mower and started running it over the little yard until a next-door neighbor and fellow tweaker walked out of his house in his underwear at 4:30 A.M., and said, “Dude, if you don’t stop workin like a deranged fuckin beaver my old lady said she’s gonna burn your house down and that’s a promise!”

The first one up the next morning was Bobbie Ann Doggett. The second was Fin Finnegan, only because Bobbie phoned him at 8:00 A.M. sharp.

Fin stared at the ringing telephone like he was Alexander Graham Bell’s cleaning lady wondering what the hell that strange contraption was.

“Uuuhhhh!” he mumbled, after he worked it all out and picked it up.

“It’s Bobbie!” she said. “I’m real sorry, Fin, but I could hardly wait to call!”

“Uuuuuhhh!” he said, afraid to raise his head from the pillow. “Bobbie, I’m near death! Please!”

“Don’t you want a second opinion? Listen to me, Fin. The shoe? Whaddaya say we call and talk to the officer that found the dead guy’s foot? Or maybe we could call the morgue?”

“It’s Saturday, Bobbie! I’m on a day off. You’re on a day off.”

“But Fin,” she said, “if the dead guy’s foot was inside a black steel-toe high-top U.S. Navy flight-deck shoe, I’m gonna arrest those two truckers for grand theft!”

“Wait, Bobby!” he said, sitting up. Then, “Owwwwww!”

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? You drank as much, no, more than I did and you ask what’s wrong?”

“I felt a little sick last night, but I went for a jog this morning and I’m fine,” she said.

Youth. Communication was hopeless. “Don’t go running off and arresting anybody,” he said. “Lemme get up and find my head and make some coffee and call a priest for last rites. Then I’ll phone the CHP and see if I can get in touch with the young officer who added to my present torment by going on a treasure hunt for a goddamn foot!”

“Okay, I’m at home and I’m ready to go to work,” she said. “This’ll be the biggest arrest I ever made. It’s rad!”

“Rad,” Fin said, hanging up the phone. Then, “Rad. Cool. Awesome. Ow, my freaking head!”

While Fin was trying to accomplish the most difficult task of the week, namely, locating the bathroom door, another urgent call was being made by an equally anxious caller.

“Here, pus brain,” she said, “it’s for you.”

Shelby Pate didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know who she was for a moment, even though he’d been living with the woman for eighteen months.

He lay in bed and tried to focus, but couldn’t. He heard the telephone voice saying, “Hello? Hello?”

He tried to put the receiver back on the cradle, but only managed to knock everything on the floor.

“Hello?” the voice said, more faintly.

Then Shelby felt himself being shaken by his hair. “Ooooooo!” he moaned. “You bitch!”

“Get up, puke face, and talk to him!” she said. “It’s your fucking boss! I gotta leave for work now or I won’t have a job and you’ll have to support me for a change, you speed-freak asshole!”

And with that good morning, Shelby Pate’s long-suffering girlfriend went off to her job as a manager of a pizza joint, leaving him to listen to that fucking telephone voice yammering at him.

“Hello? Hello? Hello? Goddamnit!” the voice said.

Disoriented, he picked up the phone and said, “Flaco, is that you? It’s too early, man!”

“This is Jules Temple!” the voice said.

“What?”

“It’s Jules Temple! Wake up. We gotta talk.”

That brought him around a bit. He raised up on one elbow and said, “Kin I call you back, Mister Temple?”

“I just need a few minutes. It’s important.”

He couldn’t find a pencil anyway, so he said, “Okay, I’ll try to talk, but I was up late.”

“It’s about the cops that visited you yesterday,” Jules said. “I got back to the office and found a note from Mary.”

“Yeah?”

“What’d they want?”

“Kin this wait?”

“No, goddamnit! What’d they want? I gotta know! It’s my business! You’re my employee!”

There was nothing like a little jolt of anger to cut through the fog. “I know you’re my boss,” Shelby said.

“There seems to be a lotta interest in you two and that truck. What happened? Mary said a kid was contaminated from the Guthion.”

His head was clearing more quickly and he said, “That’s right, Mister Temple. From the Guthion.”

“That’s a shame,” Jules said. “But what else did they say? Did they find the drums? Did they find … anything?”

“No, Mister Temple,” Shelby said. “They didn’t say nothing about the waste drums. Whaddaya mean by find anything?”

“Well …” Jules hesitated. “Like the license plates, or registration, or any documents from the truck.”

“They didn’t say nothing about no license plates or registration.”

“Anything else? Did they ask about anything else or mention finding anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Goddamnit, like the fucking manifests! Did they mention finding the manifests?”

“Which one?” Shelby asked innocently. “The one from North Island or the one from Southbay Agricultural Supply?”

Jules could have shot him dead. He could have plunged a knife into his throat. He could have pushed him into a vat of acid in the storage yard. But he took a long pause and said, “All right, did they mention the manifest from North Island? Like maybe they found it?”

“No, they didn’t,” Shelby said, and even through the hellacious methamphetamine and tequila hangover, he was starting to enjoy this.

“Did they mention the other manifest?” Jules asked very carefully, the way you’d talk to a lunatic chained to a wall. “Did they maybe find the manifest from Southbay Agricultural Supply?”

“No, they didn’t say they found it,” Shelby said.

“They didn’t? Okay, I was just wondering, and …”

Shelby interrupted him: “But they mentioned it.”

“What … did they say, Shelby?” Jules asked, with no emotion whatsoever in his voice.

“Just that we was carryin this real bad Guthion and it would have to be manifested for outta state. Texas, I think. That’s what they said.”

“And what did you say?”

“That we never pay no attention to what manifests say. Our job was to bring the stuff back to the yard and then you tend to it after that.”

“Okay,” Jules said. “Okay, was there anything else they said?”

“Just asked us again about how the truck got stolen. Like, whether we saw anybody we knew around Angel’s when we went in for lunch. That kinda stuff. Cop stuff.”

Jules was enormously relieved. Now he wanted to smooth things over with this halfwit, to keep Shelby Pate from thinking that there was any more to this than a routine call from a concerned employer.

“I’m sorry to be so abrupt and to call you so early,” Jules said, “but you can imagine how I feel. A child died because our waste got dumped by some truck thief. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. Still, I feel very bad about it. You can understand, can’t you?”

“Sure, Mister Temple.”

“So that was it?” Jules Temple said. “They haven’t found any paperwork whatsoever?”

The ox managed a little smile, even with a blinding headache. It was fun being clever, particularly since Shelby hated this cheesy son of a bitch with his manicured fingernails and thirty-dollar haircuts. A guy who never so much as got a palm blister in his whole life. Shelby said, “They asked again about your five hundred bucks.”

Jules knew that this larcenous son of a bitch was rubbing it in about his money, but he forced himself to say, “And you told them the same as before? That the truck thief got it?”

“Right. That it was in an envelope wrapped up by the manifests inside the glove box. Where we put everything for safekeeping.”

Jules persuaded himself to say calmly and casually, “In the glove compartment with the two manifests?”

“Right,” the ox said, grinning now, because he knew that Jules Temple knew they’d ripped him off for the $500. And there was nothing he could do about it. Shelby loved this.

But he’d overplayed it again, just as he had with Bobbie Ann Doggett. As Fin Finnegan might say, he’d taken his performance clear over the top. But even if Shelby had had a clearer head he might not have been clever enough to manipulate Jules Temple.

“If I need to talk to you again, Shelby, I hope you don’t mind if I call you?”

“Anytime, Mister Temple,” said Shelby. “Anytime.”

Then Jules hung up. The blood had drained from his face. He got up and began to pace. He went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. His hands were actually trembling, and that was not like him.

That imbecile said that both manifests were in the glove box, but the day after the so-called truck theft, he’d told Jules that one manifest was on the seat in the cab and one was in the glove box. Now he’d forgotten about that lie.

It could be an honest mistake. Shelby Pate was obviously hung over and more dimwitted than usual. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but Jules didn’t think so. There was something about the way he’d said “Guthion.”

Jules believed that Shelby Pate had read that manifest, and if he’d read it, he might still have it. Or at least he knew where he’d tossed it and he’d go find it, now that the cops had given those fools information that could put Jules Temple in prison!

But would Pate and Durazo risk jail themselves? They’d dumped the waste. They’d faked the truck theft. A moment’s thought provided the answer. They could tell the authorities that they had no idea that the waste was anything more than what the manifest said it was: waste flammable liquid. They could cut a deal with the police, if it came to it. Jules knew he was about to be blackmailed.

While Shelby Pate tried to pull himself together by drinking hot coffee, Jules Temple, for the very first time in his life, began to contemplate an act of violence. He began to contemplate murder.

It was Nell Salter who got the next phone call of the morning, and she was surprised that it was from Fin.

“I got some news for you,” he said.

“Was your pasta a success?”

“What pasta?”

“Last night. Pasta?”

“Oh, that. No, it’s about our case. The guy that got killed in the hot truck was wearing a shoe that was stolen along with a couple thousand other shoes at North Island when our two truckers picked up the hazardous waste.”

“What?”

“His cold foot was in a hot shoe!”

“Were you drinking again last night?”

“Yeah, but I’m sober now. The truckers and the dead guy apparently pulled a grand theft at North Island, then drove to T.J., then faked the theft of the truck. So this means they also dumped the waste!”

“Can we start from the beginning?”

“Not now, I gotta meet somebody. Are you willing to work on Saturday?”

“Of course not.”

“But we might get lucky and make you a case for intentional dumping of hazardous waste resulting in deaths. I don’t think you make a case like that every day, do you?”

The fact was, she’d never made a case like that, not for a dumping that caused death. Nell said, “Okay, where do I meet you?”

“At the front gate of North Island.”

“Why there?”

“It’s convenient for all three of us.”

“Three?”

“We’ll be driving down to Green Earth to have a talk with our two truckers, or we’ll stake out their homes if they don’t work on Saturday. We’ll find those boys.”

“Who’s the we?”

“An investigator from the navy’s gonna join us. She wants their shoes back.”

After hanging up, Nell thought, she?

“You were right!” Fin said after he got Bobbie on the phone later that morning. “It took me awhile to get him, but the CHP officer that found the foot described your shoe to a T!”

“Out-standing!” Bobbie said.

“Don’t go turbo on me,” Fin said. “We gotta do a few things. One thing we should do is wait till Monday when we’re all getting paid for police work.”

“What if those two dudes’re working today? What if they dump another load a waste like they did the first one? Do you think they care about human life?”

“Just like every woman I ever met,” Fin said. “A guilt maker.”

“I think it’s our duty to take those guys down as soon as possible. If you don’t, I will!”

“Whoa!” he said. “Chill out, Bobbie. I’ll meet you at the main gate of North Island at two o’clock. The D.A.’s investigator I told you about, she’s gonna be there.”

“Oh, then you’d already planned to do the right thing?”

“I mighta known. You’ve got a black belt in guilt-tripping.”

* * *

At 11:30 that morning, Abel Durazo crawled lazily out of bed and fried himself some chorizo and scrambled eggs. He drank three cups of coffee and watched TV cartoons along with four of the kids belonging to the Guatemalan couple who rented him his room. He could’ve afforded better than a rented room, but he never squandered money. Abel sent $400 a month to his mother in Tijuana. She in turn wrote to him twice a week and prayed that someday they’d have enough so that he could return home and be with the rest of the family forever.

Before noon, Abel received a phone call from Shelby Pate, who said, “Kin you talk now, dude?”

Abel was puzzled and said, “We got problem?”

“We got a pot a gold waitin, dude, is what we got!”

“Yes,” Abel said. “Een Tijuana.”

“That ain’t nothin!” said the ox. “I’m talkin about big money. Robo bucks. Humongous dinero!”

“You steel drunk, Buey?”

“A little bit, but I managed to get an hour’s sleep. Let’s meet and talk somewheres before we go to T.J.”

“Okay, where?”

Shelby said, “Meet me where we got our truck stole.”

“What?”

“At Angel’s, you dumb Mexican!” Shelby said.

Abel giggled and said, “Okay, Buey, we meet at Angel’s, but we don’ stay too long. Maybe somebody steal my car!”

This time it was Shelby’s turn to giggle. He said, “Meet me there at, say, three o’clock.”

“Okay, Buey,” Abel said, and hung up just in time to catch a Porky Pig cartoon. He liked the old cartoons best, especially Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

* * *

Naturally, Bobbie arrived first, and she made sure that her bike was still safely locked up from the day before. She was wearing a raspberry, flannel-lined fleece stadium jacket that she got on sale for $29, along with Bill Blass jeans. The most expensive item on her body, next to her Colt.45 automatic, was her Gloria Vanderbilt lace-up booties that set her back $35. Bobbie had tried to dress for action in the event that the arrest of Shelby Pate and Abel Durazo got rough. Bobbie had been wildly excited all day and had gone jogging twice trying to calm herself.

Nell Salter arrived next, looked for a place to park her five-year-old Audi sedan, then decided to make a U-turn and wait at the curb for Fin’s Corvette. While she was waiting she saw a young blonde in a raspberry jacket chatting with the navy sentry.

Fin parked on the side street, locked his Vette, and while walking toward Nell’s Audi, spotted Bobbie with the sentry.

“Bobbie!” he shouted, and she waved, then trotted toward Nell’s car.

Nell was casually attired, but had invested more than Bobbie had. She wore a lavender silk blouse with rolled sleeves, pleated black stirrup pants, and black leather pumps. She had a black sweater vest in the car in case they worked into the evening.

Fin could see that Nell was not packing, but he figured that Bobbie would be loaded for rhino, and she was. When the three investigators linked up, Fin said, “Bobbie, this is Nell. Nell Salter, meet Bobbie Ann Doggett.”

Bobbie showed Nell a big smile and shook hands vigorously. Nell gave her a half-smile and shook hands with less enthusiasm, especially when Bobbie looked so approvingly at Fin, who wore a blue cotton turtleneck, Dockers, and a white windbreaker.

Bobbie said, “You look cool in a turtleneck, Fin!”

“Hides a sagging neck,” Nell said, dryly.

Bobbie thought that Nell was very attractive, but not in the usual way, not with that bent nose. Yet she was a mature woman who looked in charge of her life, and that was intimidating to a woman Bobbie’s age.

Nell studied Bobbie and thought she needed to lose ten pounds. And Nell couldn’t fail to notice how she fawned over Fin. He returned her fawning with a badly concealed “aw shucks” kind of foot shuffling. Nell half expected him to tug at his forelock. It was pathetic.

Before the conversation went very far, Fin said, “My Vette can’t carry three.”

Bobbie said, “My Hyundai isn’t very comfortable.”

Nell said, “We’ll take my Audi.”

“We need to go someplace and talk,” Fin said.

“Not someplace where they serve alcohol,” Nell said, looking purposefully at Bobbie. “Have you noticed that he drinks?”

Bobbie grinned at Fin and said, “No worse than a sailor.”

Had to stay home and cook pasta? Nell thought. Yeah. She thought she might faint if it got any more revolting. He’d actually blushed when Bobbie giggled!

“I know what,” Fin said. “There’s a nineteen-fifties lunch counter on Orange Avenue. Let’s go there for a burger and a coke.”

“Out-standing!” Bobbie said.

“In-tense!” Nell said.

“What?” Fin said.

“In-credible!” Nell said. “Let’s go hang out!”

“Is there something wrong?” Fin asked quietly.

“Of course not,” Nell said, with the first of an afternoon full of smirks. “This is all so predictable.”

* * *

The diner was a real fifties-style lunch counter, not one of the ersatz diners that’ve become popular in recent years. This one hadn’t changed since We-liked-Ike, except for an occasional paint job, or a new sheet of Formica on the counter, or some new plastic on the revolving stools.

Fin sat between the two women and ordered a Coke. Nell ordered coffee and Bobbie ordered a large orange juice, and a burger with everything.

“Gotta replenish the vitamin C,” she said, beaming at Fin and adding, “after last night.”

Nell noticed that Bobbie usually placed her hand on his forearm when she spoke to him.

“This is so touching, I don’t need sugar in my coffee,” Nell said to the waitress in a stage whisper.

In that she was getting on in years, the waitress turned her good ear toward Nell and said, “Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” Nell said. “Everything’s swell”

Nell also noticed that Fin deferred to Bobbie each time there was something to be explained to Nell during the fifteen-minute conversation. Nell learned about the theft from North Island, and that Bobbie felt it was very suspicious that Jules Temple hadn’t informed them that there was a navy investigator interested in the case.

When Bobbie and Fin were all through telling the story, Nell stared into the bottom of her coffee cup and said, “This is a squirrely case and getting more so.”

“I think it’s clearing up,” Bobbie said.

Nell said, “So Abel Durazo, Shelby Pate, and a deceased Mexican national named Pepe Palmera were in cahoots to steal the navy shoes, sell them in T.J. and …”

“Along with the truck,” Fin added.

“Okay, so they probably sold the truck, or at least planned to use it to haul the pottery … Wait a minute. The pottery shop in Old Town? Do you think …”

“It’s complicated enough,” Fin said. “Let’s not include him in this conspiracy.”

“Okay, for now it’s just those three.”

“Why didn’t Jules Temple tell you about me?” Bobbie wanted to know.

Nell smiled sweetly and said, “Maybe he didn’t think you were that important, honey.”

Fin shot Nell a dirty look and she returned it with a smirk, but Bobbie wasn’t fazed.

“I can’t believe he’d just think it was too trivial to mention,” Bobbie said. “Do you, Fin?”

“I tend to agree with Bobbie,” he said.

“Of course you do,” Nell muttered.

Then Fin turned to Bobbie and said, “But still, I can’t understand why Jules Temple would involve himself with the theft of two thousand pairs of shoes, not to mention going along with the loss of his truck.”

“Maybe the truck’s heavily insured,” Bobbie said.

This time Nell leaned forward on her stool, looked around Fin, and said, “There’s always a deductible on a policy, my dear, that he would have to pay.”

Bobbie leaned over, looked at Nell, and said, “Of course! Since I don’t have your many many years of investigation, I didn’t think a that.”

Fin interrupted quickly. “I think the faking of the truck theft lets Jules Temple off the hook as far as being part of any grand-theft conspiracy. Even if it’s just one of many thefts involving these guys.”

“Are those navy warehouses secure?” Nell asked.

“About as secure as Woody Allen,” said Fin.

“True,” Bobbie said. “They coulda pulled a lotta stuff outta our warehouses over a period of months.”

“Jules Temple can’t be part of that, Bobbie,” Fin said. “It doesn’t check out.”

Nell looked into her cup again and said, “Yet …”

“Yet what?” Fin asked.

“What if his truckers’re independent contractors as far as stealing is concerned, but in cahoots with their boss on something else?”

“Such as?”

“Such as dumping hazardous waste in Mexico, instead of Jules Temple having to spend the money to properly dispose of it.”

“Yeah!” Bobbie said. “I know he’s involved somehow. The guy’s oilier than Kuwait.”

“Could that be why he’s less than forthcoming?” Fin asked. “He’s a waste dumper?”

“Wait a minute,” Nell said. “No, it doesn’t wash. There were only a few drums involved here, and there’re manifests to deal with, waste belonging to different customers on two different manifests. How would he explain to the EPA that manifested waste never got to its destination?”

“By claiming the truck was stolen?” Bobbie suggested.

“To save hauling costs on a few drums of waste, he’s going to give up a truck? No,” Nell said. “No.”

“Okay, I give up,” Fin said. “Jules Temple has nothing to do with anything. Durazo, Pate and the dead man were partners in a conspiracy to steal from the warehouse and to steal the truck. Period.”

“Sounds right,” Nell said.

Bobbie said nothing. She clearly didn’t like anything about Jules Temple, including his goddamn haircut. All she’d say was “So let’s go hook up the two truckers. The shoe on the dead guy ties them in good enough for an arrest, at least.”

Nell nodded at Fin and said, “The porky dude’ll rat off the little Mexican, I bet.”

“Wait a minute!” Fin said. “Just when I got it sorted out another possibility jumped up.”

“Go ahead,” Nell said with a sigh.

“What if Pate and Durazo stole the shoes, but Pepe Palmera, a total stranger, stole their truck while they were having lunch at Angel’s. Isn’t that possible? Pepe Palmera got himself a cargo of waste and shoes, and he drove them straight to T.J.”

“Then Pate and Durazo’re telling the truth about everything except stealing the shoes from the navy?” Nell asked.

“Exactly,” Fin said.

“But if they had nothing to do with Pepe Palmera, then how easy is it gonna be to connect them up with the shoe that was on his foot?” Bobbie asked.

“Not easy at all,” Fin said, “unless they can be persuaded to drop a dime on each other.”

“Shit!” Bobbie said. “They just gotta be involved in a conspiracy with the dead guy. They drove that truck to T.J. The two thousand pairs a shoes’re in Tijuana and they know where at. They dumped the waste that killed that little kid.”

“I’m getting tired of this,” Nell said. “Let’s go find those two guys and sweat them. First the big fat one, then the skinny Mexican.”

Bobbie looked at Fin with anticipation. He looked back into her blue eyes for a few seconds and said, “Okay, sailor, but stay close to me. Hear?”

Bobbie beamed at him, and put her hand on his forearm.

Nell shook her head slowly, turned her face away, and said: “Dis-gust-ing.”

The old waitress shuffled over and said, “It ain’t that bad is it, love? I can make a fresh pot.”