Gone, No Forwarding

Twenty-Four

Heslip had slept in his car yet again, this time in front of the address he had gotten from Zeb Rounds, 110 Allerton Street in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The houses were boxcarred down a San Francisco-steep hill, but the architecture was something completely new to him. Aged three-deck frame houses with an outside stairway to the upper floors on the front of the house and landings which were really porches on each floor. Looked like flats, one to a floor.

At 110, no answer on any floor. He went back down from the top flat and out to the narrow, slanted sidewalk. Roxbury was part of Boston, and Boston was damned cold this time of the morning in October, bright sunshine or not. Two houses down, a gray tiger-stripe cat was watching him. The door behind it opened and a black girl wearing an apron came out and picked it up. Her eyes met Heslip’s and he gestured at the house he had just quit. “Nobody home. Do you know—”

“Wasn’t no answer upstairs at Ethel’s place? Third floor? She’s Cliff’s sister.” Heslip had gotten Cliff Brown’s name from Zeb Rounds, to go with the address. One of the girl’s hands unconsciously stroked the old tom’s blunt, scarred head. “Ethel Brown. Gettin’ her welfare under that name, so that’s the name she keeps even though she’s got a live-in man. Probably went shopping, she’s got two boys in school.”

Half an hour later a slim black woman in a cloth coat came trudging up from the bus stop with a heavy supermarket bag of groceries. Heslip held them so she could get out her keys. “You must be Ethel,” he said with a big grin.

“That don’t tell me who you are.” She blew out a long breath. “Whew! The Good Samaritan, maybe?”

“I try to be.” He broadened his grin. “Johnny Mack said you’d be home, most mornings.”

Her Good-Samaritan look faded. “You a friend of Johnny’s?”

He took his cue from her voice. “I owe him a little money on the New England-Miami game, and that’s the truth. He was sayin’ how broke he was. I got some cash right now from Mother’s Day...”

Being when welfare checks arrived. Since she’d been shopping, it was a pretty safe bet yesterday had been the day. She reached, stiff-faced, for her groceries. “I don’t hold much with gambling.”

“Neither do I,” said Heslip with his ready grin, “not when I lose. Thing is, he said his woman was pregnant or some such...”

“That woman? That Vernal Listen, let me tell you about that piece of goods. Was months ago she was pregnant, and...”

Johnny Mack had shown up with the pregnant Verna several months before. He’d bunked downstairs with Cliff, Verna upstairs with Ethel and her family. At first.

“Wasn’t enough that girl was a whore, but then I started missing things, things you could pawn, y’know? And any money around the house.” She shook her head in remembered outrage. “That damn girl was a junkie! A junkie whore, he brings her into my house, where I’m raising my kids! I threw her out, don’t know where she went. Johnny Mack moved out of Cliff’s place, too — and I don’t know where he went, either. I know neither one of ’em will set foot in my house again.”

“Would Cliff know where Johnny Mack is? I really ought to pay him back this money...”

“Me and Cliff aren’t that close, mister.”

Tranquillini said, with the manner of a man who’s had a twenty-dollar lunch rather than a hot dog out of a cardboard boat, “Did Mr. Pivarski give you the letter, or did he give it to Miss Onoda?”

“He gave it to me. I read it and then gave it to her.”

“Did Miss Onoda make any comment upon reading it?”

“She asked me to call Mr... to call your office.”

“And you did.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what did you say the date was?”

“November fifth.”

“And you got no answer at my office, none at all. Did Mr. Pivarski have any comments while all this was going on?”

“He was not present. I’d left him by my desk...”

“Of course. And Mr. Pivarski then was invited back to the private office and Miss Onoda signed the bottom of this famous letter in his presence, and—”

“Objection to counsel’s use of the word ‘famous.’ ”

“Sustained.”

Tranquillini nodded acquiescence. “Sorry, Your Honor. Now, it was after this conversation, Mr. Simson, that the money was tendered and the letter signed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you knew of this letter from November fifth of last year until this very day, didn’t you, Mr. Simson? You have never forgotten Pivarski bringing that copy of the letter from his attorney, have you? Not for an instant.”

“I recall the letter,” said Simson stubbornly.

Tranquillini addressed the bench almost off-handedly.

“Respondent has previously placed before you as Exhibit A for Identification, an affidavit signed by Mr. Simson. I now would like that affidavit introduced into evidence.”

“Any objection?”

“Yes.”

The Hearing Officer hesitated. “I take it this is being offered for the purpose of impeachment, Mr. Tranquillini?”

“We object that it does not impeach the witness’s testimony,” said Delaney.

“That’s up to the Hearing Officer,” Tranquillini retorted.

“We will take a half-hour recess while I study this document. I will rule upon it at that time.”

DKA was not an agency that specialized in electronics, but being in the detective business they had a certain familiarity with bugs and their detection. As Kearny and O’Bannon moved about his private office, they carried a short-wave radio, very slowly taking the tuner across the spectrum of bands as they did.

“I’m telling you,” said O’B, “that the ’Niners have the best defensive front four in football right now.”

“Even if I give you that,” said Kearny, who lived in Raider territory, “they don’t have the offensive punch of the Raiders. I think...” With sudden clarity, his voice was also coming from the radio. “...that the Raiders are going to the Super Bowl again this year. I don’t think” — he switched off the radio — “... there is a team in pro football who can stop them.”

O’Bannon spoke regretfully, “Well, hell, Dan. I have that Crescent Motors flooring check to get out this afternoon. I’ve been carrying it around for two days...”

“I’ll get that billing file from your car.”

Neither man spoke again until they were outside and standing under the skyway where their voices were half-drowned in the thunder and growl of overhead traffic, just in case someone was getting really fancy and using a shotgun mike on them from some adjacent building. “Infinity transmitter in the phone, like I thought,” said Kearny.

Infinity transmitters, sometimes called butterfly mikes, are tiny senders which operate without wires or outside connections. They broadcast not only phone conversations but anything within thirty feet of the phone, once they have been activated by the phone being rung from outside and an electronic signal being sent to them. A voice-activated tape recorder takes down whatever is said.

“Somebody spent a lot of time and money on this one,” said O’B. “Think one of our people let them through the alarms?”

“More likely they got a wiring diagram from the alarm company and cut our electricity from outside long enough to go in and plant the thing. Two, three minutes inside is all they would need. I’ll be going back to the hearing in a bit, I can alert Giselle, but would you find a pay phone and call Sacramento? Tell them to radio Ballard on the CB and find out where he’s staying and tell him not to phone in. No explanations. I don’t want our office up there knowing what’s going on.”

“Will do.”

Kearny returned to his office and lit a cigarette and stared at the bugged telephone. Who? Some agency of the State? He rejected that out of hand, as he did anyone from the city cops. So it was the organized crime people who ran Padilla Drayage as one of their quasi-legal fronts. The bug had served them well, alerting them to Benny Nicoletti’s secret witness; but that wasn’t why it had been placed — that had just been a bonus. What was there in the DKA license squabble with the State that was worth all that time, effort and expense?

There was only one answer: to find out how close Bart Heslip was getting to Verna Rounds, so they could get to her first. But why? What could she possibly know that would be of use to them?

Maybe he’d know more after he talked with Benny Nicoletti tonight. In person. Find out when Benny’s witness was discovered, when he’d cracked, when Benny had talked with Pivarski at Hawkley’s office — things like that. Meanwhile, he had time to catch the end of Hec’s attack on Jeffrey Simson.

“Complainant’s objection is overruled,” said the Hearing Officer. “The document will be received in evidence as Respondent’s Exhibit A.”

“I believe that is all of this witness,” said Tranquillini.

“Any redirect?”

Delaney picked up his copy of Simson’s affidavit. “Did you prepare this document, Mr. Simson?” He looked over at the court reporter. “I am referring to Respondent Exhibit A.”

“I wrote what is there, yes, sir.”

“Mr. Dan Kearny asked you to prepare this document, did he not, on October twenty-second of this year?”

“I believe that was the date.”

“Are the words in this document your own words, Mr. Simson?”

“Well, sir, it’s... hard to answer that just yes or no. Mr. Kearny and Mr. O’Bannon came to my apartment in Los Angeles and they... were present at the time I wrote it. As... each sentence was written, Mr. Kearny was looking... at the wording of my sentences...”

You are goofing it, Johnny-me-bhoy, thought Tranquillini as he mentally rehearsed his objection. This line of questioning makes it impossible for you to claim that Simson altered circumstances in his affidavit to help out his old friend Dan Kearny.

“Did he make any comments to you as to what actually must have happened?” asked Delaney.

“Yes, sir,” said Simson eagerly, “he made comments and...”

“And suggestions as to what should go into the affidavit?”

“Need I remind the witness that he is under oath?” asked Tranquillini off-handedly, “and that the witnesses to this conversation are still alive and able to testify?”

Simson cleared his throat. “Mr. Kearny... um... made no suggestions per se, no, sir.”

“Mr. Hearing Officer, I have a great deal of difficulty in examining the witness on this document because I don’t understand in what way it impeaches his sworn testimony.” Delaney’s voice was angry and baffled, as if he were just realizing the mistake he had made in emphasizing the prior antagonist relationship between Kearny and Simson due to Simson’s dismissal from DKA in February.

Tranquillini was on his feet. “I believe I can explain to counsel how this document impeaches his witness if I could have permission, from time to time, to go slightly beyond the docu—”

“Objection,” said Delaney.

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

The Hearing Officer said, “I will rule on the admissibility of counsel’s statements as they occur.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. After the witness stated that he tried to call my office and got no answer on November fifth, I had my answering service’s records searched. No call, none at all, was logged in during the hour and date in question.”

“I would point out,” said Delaney hurriedly, “that answering service records are not kept according to the rules of evidence.”

“Noted. Please proceed, Mr. Tranquillini.”

“In his affidavit the witness stated that only he and Miss Onoda were in the office that evening, with Ms. Rose Kelly on the front office switchboard. We now have located Ms. Kelly, who is willing to testify that she was not on the switchboard that day and hour in question.”

Delaney had started to rise to object, but he hesitated, then sank back down while staring thoughtfully at Simson on the stand.

“Faulty recollection on the witness’s part?” asked Tranquillini. “Perhaps. His memory seems very convenient. But his affidavit also states that the Pivarski transaction was ‘just a normal collection’ — his own words.”

He raked Simson with scorn-filled eyes. “Four days ago, when he wrote this statement, that was all he could remember, Your Honor. Yet now he remembers, under oath, the letter Pivarski is supposed to have gotten Kathy Onoda’s signature on. This, even though the State cannot produce this signed letter. He remembers a call to me of which there is no record. He remembers Miss Onoda fraudulently writing and destroying a normal DKA receipt for the Pivarski payment. Yet he cannot remember the address where he lived six months ago. Only with difficulty can he remember the address where he lived for two years. He cannot remember the name of one other of the two thousand accounts he serviced as a DKA collector...”

Tranquillini waved a hand as if too disgusted to continue. “Your Honor, I have no desire to go any further at this time. The document speaks for itself. The Hearing Officer will review this witness’s testimony in relation to the document, to determine if it does impeach.” He turned cold eyes on Simson. “You are excused.”

Delaney began, “Mr. Hearing Officer—”

The Hearing Officer cut him off curtly. “At the end of yesterday’s hearing, I directed Complainant to present Mr. Pivarski to this hearing. We are now ready to have Mr. Pivarski sworn in.”

“I... cannot produce him at this time, Your Honor,” said Delaney in an uncomfortable voice. “I have been assured by his attorneys that we can have him here Monday morning, but...”

After a long pause the Hearing Officer looked over at Tranquillini. “Counselor?”

“Monday morning is acceptable to the Respondent, Your Honor.”

Or never, even, thought Tranquillini. It looked as if he had been successful in showing Simson’s testimony was tainted and thus, in keeping the letter out of evidence. Temporarily. But on Monday he had to start all over again with Pivarski. Pivarski’s direct testimony would get the letter in for sure, unless he was also able to discredit him. He’d gambled that by pushing a subpoena for Pivarski, Heslip would get enough time to find Verna Rounds, so they’d have direct testimony on their side. It looked like he’d lost the gamble. And cost Kearny his license in the process.

“Very well,” said the Hearing Officer. “These proceedings are adjourned until ten o’clock on Monday morning.”