Illusions

13

It was frustration more than anything else that sent me over to the Portola district rather than home to my fiat or Kerry’s condo. Proximity had something to do with it, too — Silliman Street, just north of McLaren Park, is only a few miles from S. F. General and easily reachable by freeway — but I might have gone there even if it had been twenty miles out of the way. Now I’ll never know kept repeating inside my head, a kind of mantra of the perverse. I could not make myself believe it because I didn’t want to believe it; you can deny anything, even the most fundamental truths, if your desire for the opposite is strong enough.

That part of the city is working-class residential, on the downscale side as the result of any number of urban problems, one of them being the drug-infested housing projects on the Visitacion Valley side of McLaren Park. Dowdy row houses dominated the block between Gambier and Harvard; the one owned or rented by Danny Forbes was near the Gambier corner, small and saggy and nondescript. The double garage door under its bay windows was wide open, light from inside spilling out into the street. No other lights showed at the front.

Well, I thought, at least he’s home. I had no idea what I would say to him. Scratch his surfaces, see if there was anything underneath worth burrowing after.

I parked across the street and went to the open door. A beat-up Mercury sedan, twelve to fifteen years old, squatted in one half of the cavelike interior. The other half was either a catchall area for garage-sale junk or a haphazard retreat created by a man who preferred holing up in his garage to occupying his normal living space. Among other items were a couch covered in hideous pseudo-leopard skin, a recliner with a busted footrest, an ancient six-sided poker table with a torn felt top, and a portable TV on a wobbly-looking stand. The TV was turned on; figures that looked as though they were trying to swim through snow made semiarticulate sounds punctuated by gunfire. Nobody was watching them or listening to the noise. For all I could see, the garage was empty.

I stepped inside by three paces for a better look. Next to the chair, I noticed then, was a low table on top of which sat an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two glasses. I was staring at the bottle when wood creaked under descending footsteps and a voice said, “That you, Bert?” and then, explosively, “Hey! The hell you want?”

The stairs were at the rear, beyond the Merc; he came running off the last of the risers, around the front of the car and over to where I stood. Danny Forbes, dressed in a loud plaid sport jacket several years out of fashion and a pair of chocolate-colored slacks. His red hair had been slicked down with a gel whose sweetness assaulted my nostrils as he came up close. His broken nose had healed except for a knot at the bridge and what would probably be a permanent ten-degree list to the left; a scab showed where he’d been cut over one brow. His eyes snapped at me. So did his mouth.

“I don’t know you, man. What the hell’s the idea comin’ in my garage?”

“Door’s wide open. Lights and TV are on.”

“That don’t give you no right to walk in. Who are you? What you want?”

“Few minutes of your time.”

“Whatever you’re selling this time of night, I’m not interested.”

“I’m not selling anything. I’m buying.”

“Yeah? Buying what?” He licked thin lips; his eyes shifted, shifted back to hold on mine again. “I got nothing for sale.”

“How about some information on a dead man named Eberhardt?”

He was the type who couldn’t stand still. He’d been shuffling and bouncing around like one of those mean and hyperactive little dogs, but when I mentioned Eberhardt’s name he froze. Not for long, but long enough. He backed up a step, trying not to look worried, and put another sheen of spit on his lips before he spoke again.

“Who the fuck’s Eberhardt?”

“You know who he was, Danny. Man who killed himself on Bolt Street last week. The detective T. K. hired to find out who’s been stealing from him and Nick.”

“What’s that got to do with me? I don’t know nothing about any of that.” He was dancing again. The eyes flicked to the watch on his wrist, flicked back to my face. “What’re you, another one? T. K. hire you, too?”

“Suppose he did?”

“Suppose you get outta my garage before I throw you out.”

“Something to hide, Danny?”

“Don’t call me Danny. Only my friends call me Danny. I’m telling you, man, get out right now.” Happy feet, and those shifty, shifty eyes. “I mean it.”

“Sure thing, Danny. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Not if I see you first.”

I took my time turning and walking out. He followed me onto the sidewalk, dancing and glaring, and stayed put as I crossed to the car and put myself inside. He was still there, still watching, as I drove off.

I followed Silliman as far as Yale, turned right, turned right again on Felton and came back to Gambier. Halfway along Gambier I shut off my lights and drifted slow toward the Silliman intersection. When I got to where I could see Forbes’s house he was no longer standing in the outspill of light from the garage. Back inside somewhere; about all that was visible from this point was the back half of the Merc.

The last space at the corner was a No Parking zone. I eased the car into it and shut off the engine and sat hunched low in the dark to wait and watch.

It didn’t take long, only about ten minutes. The fifth set of headlights that passed by on Silliman swung into Forbes’s driveway and immediately went dark. The vehicle was a four-by-four of some kind; the light wasn’t bright enough for me to tell the make or model. The man who got out and entered the garage was nobody I’d ever seen before — fat, bald, middle-aged, outfitted in a long leather coat over a pair of baggy pants held up by suspenders.

He could’ve been an old pal dropping by for a drink, but I didn’t think so. Forbes’s eagerness to get rid of me said it was something else; so did the fact that he’d spiffed himself up, not so much in the fashion of a man preparing to socialize as of a salesman looking to impress a customer. I wasn’t selling anything tonight, but maybe Danny Forbes was. Maybe I’d stumbled smack into a telltale piece of bad action.

Either way, the bottle of sour mash and the two glasses said they’d have at least one drink together. So I left the car quickly and hurried across Silliman and hugged shadows until I was close enough to the four-by-four to see that it was a Ford Bronco and to read the license plate. Then I hurried back to the car to write down the number and do some more waiting.

It was another ten minutes before they showed, both of them together. Forbes shut off the lights and lowered the garage door, and they got into the Bronco. If they ended up in a bar or nightclub or bowling alley, I’d have to retrench. But the tingly fleeing in my gut said I hadn’t misread either Danny Forbes or the situation.

I let the Bronco get under way to the east before I started the car; let it make a left-hand turn onto Harvard before I swung out after them. Highway 280 was where they were headed. They took the closest southbound entrance, and after that the tail was easy enough. A moderate flow of traffic helped, too. South to the Daly City exit, west on Highway 1 to Skyline Boulevard, south on Skyline to Westridge, right on Westridge to South Mayfair — and straight into the entrance drive of Mayfair Self-Storage. I rolled on past as the four-by-four stopped at the gate, traveled another block and turned around. They were inside, the gate closing behind them, as I passed the second time.

No point in trying to get in there or in waiting around here. I headed back to 280, back to the city and Silliman Street.

On the way I called directory assistance. Luck was still with me: there was a San Francisco listing for T. K. O’Hanlon, and the woman who answered my ring said he was in. His surprise gave way to happy rumblings when I told him why I was calling.

“I’m pretty sure Forbes is your thief,” I said. “I just followed him and another guy to Mayfair Self-Storage in Daly City. I could be wrong about this, but I think the other man is a potential buyer and the stolen liquor is stored in one of the Mayfair units.”

O’Hanlon said he’d be a son-of-a-bitch. “You won’t let me hire you, then you go and nail the bastard on your own. I don’t get it. How come?”

“I wasn’t trying to nail him. Just happened to pick the right time to go talk to him.”

“They still at this Mayfair Self-Storage, Forbes and the other guy?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know for how long. It may be an outright buy tonight, but if so I doubt it’ll be for every case he has stored. A better guess is that Forbes is showing off the contraband, negotiating a price for later pickup. The two of them went in the other one’s four-by-four from Forbes’s house, which means a return trip. Odds are they’d’ve taken two cars if more than a few cases were being sold and moved out tonight.”

“I’ll get hold of Nick,” O’Hanlon said. “We’ll meet you there in half an hour—”

“Too late by then. I’ve got a better idea.”

“The cops?”

“No, not yet. Not enough proof to bring in the law. I could be wrong — I wasn’t able to get inside the storage facility to verify that the liquor is there — and we don’t want to run the risk of a lawsuit.”

“So what’s your idea?”

“You and your brother meet me at Forbes’s house. It’s on Silliman Street off Highway 280, Portola district. Either we wait there for Forbes, or if he’s already back when you get there, we go right in and brace him. If he is dirty, that should crack him.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Two conditions, T. K. No rough stuff unless Forbes or the other man provokes it. And I get at least ten minutes alone with Forbes at the outset.”

“How come you and him alone?”

“Personal reasons. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” he agreed.

“You or your brother have a cell phone or car phone?”

“I got a cell phone I can bring along.”

“Okay. I’ll be at Forbes’s house long before you; I’m almost back there now. When you get off the freeway and into his neighborhood, call me and I’ll tell you where I am and what the situation is and we’ll take it from there.”

He agreed to that, too, and I told him my number and the location of Forbes’s house. He said then, “We owe you, pal, and the O’Hanlons always pay their debts. I’m not talking handshake, either.”

“The handshake’s enough. I don’t want your money, T. K. All I want are those ten minutes with Forbes.”

“You think he had something to do with Eberhardt killing himself? That it?”

“Could be,” I said. “One way or another I’m going to find out.”

I’d been parked for twenty minutes in the same place as before, in the No Parking zone on the corner of Gambier and Silliman, when the Ford Bronco showed up. Trip to look over the merchandise and negotiate a price, and maybe a small sale and pickup; there hadn’t been time for anything else. The four-by-four stood idling in front of Forbes’s house, its headlights blazing, for less than a minute. Then Forbes got out alone and the bald guy drove off.

I was tempted to go over there and brace Forbes then and there, get it done with. But I’d committed myself to O’Hanlon, and besides, the three of us — three big, hard guys — ganging up on the little bugger was bound to rattle him more than just me going at him alone. I stayed put, watched him unlock the garage door and disappear inside. A couple of minutes later, a light behind drawn blinds showed in one of the upstairs windows.

Another ten minutes, and the mobile phone buzzed. The O’Hanlons were a few blocks away. I told T. K. where I was and pretty soon a white Cadillac Eldorado turned off Silliman, drifted past me and to the curb at the first available space. I got out and went up to meet them where the three of us couldn’t be seen from Forbes’s house.

Nick O’Hanlon was several years younger than his brother, built along the same blocky lines and even bigger — six three and a solid two hundred and fifty pounds. He let T. K. do the talking. A man that large doesn’t need words to make his presence felt.

T. K. asked, “Both of ’em at the house?”

“Just Forbes.”

“Too bad.”

“If the other one did make a buy tonight, he won’t get away with anything. I’ve got his license number.” I passed over the sheet of paper from my notebook. “One question before we go over there, T. K.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“You told me five cases of Glenlivet and two of sour mash disappeared weekend before last. What brand of sour mash?”

“Jack Daniel’s.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” I took a couple of breaths to ease the tightness in my chest. “Okay, let’s do it.”

We trooped over there and up the front stairs, each of us walking quiet. I leaned on the doorbell. Ten seconds passed, and I leaned some more, and then Forbes’s voice came warily from inside, “Hey, lay off. Who is it?”

I nudged T. K. He said, “T. K. O’Hanlon. Need to talk to you, Danny boy. Open up.”

Forbes stalled for a little time, but he didn’t have much choice other than trying to run out the back way. He opted for a lame bluff instead; unlocked and opened the door wearing a puzzled smile. “Hey, T. K., what—” The rest of it got swallowed and the smile turned upside down when he saw the three of us standing there. His hand twitched on the inner knob, as if the thought of jamming the door shut had crossed his mind. But Nick O’Hanlon already had a shoulder against it and was crowding inside. T. K. and I followed, forcing Forbes back into a cluttered and sparsely furnished front parlor.

“What’s the idea?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“You know what’s going on, you little piece of shit,” T. K. said. “So do we now. You’re the one’s been stealing from us.”

“That’s a goddamn lie—”

I said, “Mayfair Self-Storage in Daly City.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he said, but some of the bluster and most of the toughness were leaking out of him. He began to twitch and dance the way he had in the garage earlier. “Listen—”

“Shut up,” T. K. said. He looked at me. “Ten minutes alone with him, right?”

“It may take longer.”

“Take as much time as you need.”

I said to Forbes, “What’s through that door over there?”

“Screw you. I don’t hafta stand for this—”

“That’s right. You can sit for it. Nick, you want to help me settle him down?”

Nick said, “Pleasure,” and we each took a piece of Forbes and half carried him through the doorway into a dirty kitchen and banged him onto a dinette chair. Then Nick went out, wordlessly, and left him to me.

“We’re going to talk about Eberhardt,” I said. “You and me, Forbes, until you tell me everything I want to know.”

No answer. He sat there trying to reestablish his belligerent attitude and not making much headway.

“He caught you, didn’t he? Saturday or Sunday night, red-handed.”

His eyes shifted, his body twitched. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“He was staked out in the alley and you didn’t know it until it was too late. You got into the warehouse, came out with the liquor, and he grabbed you. How much of the sour mash did you give him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“He drank cheap whiskey — Four Roses. It was all he could afford. But he had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s the night he died. He had to’ve gotten it from you.”

Fidgets and glowers.

“Come on, Forbes. You want this to go on all night? Or how about if I call the O’Hanlons in here and let them beat it out of you? I’ll do that if you don’t start talking. Believe it.”

He believed it. The last of his toughness dribbled out of him like sand from a ruptured sack. His shoulders slumped; the sinewy body went slack. Only his hands continued to move, lifting, falling, bumping into each other in midair as if he no longer had any control over them.”

“All right,” he muttered. “The fuck’s the use now? Yeah, he caught me. Sunday night. Yeah.”

“And you put up a fight. That’s how you got the busted nose and the eye cut. Eberhardt.”

“Old bastard like him, and half drunk.” Sullen now, expression and voice both. “Dark on the loading dock. Otherwise it’d’ve been his ass that got kicked.”

“Sure it would. Staggering drunk he was twice as tough as you think you are. How much Jack Daniel’s did he take?”

“Two lousy bottles. That’s all he wanted.”

“No it isn’t. He wanted money, too. Five hundred dollars.”

“Yeah.”

“Five hundred not to haul your sorry butt to the police. Five hundred to keep his mouth shut and let you leave with the cases of whiskey.” The words were like fecal matter on my tongue; I spat them out.

“Yeah,” Forbes said. “Yeah, five hundred. I only had fifty on me. He took that, told me I’d better have the rest in cash next day. I had it.”

“When’d you pay him off?”

“Monday night, like he wanted.”

“Where?”

“Bolt Street, where else?” he said, and added bitterly, “I wasn’t the only one ripping off the O’Hanlons.”

“You figured he’d be there Tuesday night, too, so you went back and snuck up on him and shot him.”

Forbes jerked upright, came halfway out of his chair; I pushed him back down. For the first time real fear showed in his shifty eyes. “No! Jesus, I didn’t go near him again after Monday, I swear it. Why would I kill him?”

“So you wouldn’t have to pay any more blackmail.”

“No, he said the five hundred was a one-time thing—”

“Every blackmailer says that and you know it.”

“Jesus, listen... if I wanted to kill him, why wouldn’t I do it Monday night? Huh? Why would I pay him the five hundred and then go back the next night and shoot him?”

“You tell me.”

“I didn’t! I was with a woman Tuesday night, all night at her place, I told the cops that. Give you her name, you go talk to her, she’ll tell you. I stole the liquor, okay, I admit it, but I’m not a killer, man.”

I stared holes through him.

“You gotta believe me,” he said, whining now. “He shot himself, he musta. I heard about it, I couldn’t believe he’d do something like that right after I paid him the five hundred. It didn’t make no sense to me, but I was glad about it, sure, I figured I was off the hook...”

Babbling now, and I couldn’t stand to listen to any more. He was telling the truth; he hadn’t killed Eberhardt. Eberhardt had shot himself. I told him to shut up, reached down and yanked him out of the chair.

“Now you listen and listen good. You say you didn’t shoot Eberhardt, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But you keep your mouth shut about him when the cops question you again. Don’t tell them he caught you, don’t tell them he smacked you around, don’t tell them about the two bottles of Jack or the five hundred, don’t even mention his name. You understand me, Forbes? None of that happened.”

“Yeah, yeah, I understand. I won’t say nothing, I swear to God I won’t.”

“Better not, because Eberhardt was once a cop and if the police have any reason to suspect you might’ve killed him...”

I didn’t need to finish it; his eyes said he’d gotten the message. Enough, I thought. I pushed him to the door, out into the front room.

“I’m finished with him,” I said to the O’Hanlons. “He’s all yours.”

Nick O’Hanlon came over and caught hold of Forbes’s arm. The look on his face was that of a hound taking possession of a hunk of raw meat.

I motioned to T. K. and he went to the front door with me. “One favor, T. K.,” I said.

“Sure. Name it.”

“When you get around to having Forbes arrested, I don’t want any of the credit. You and Nick were suspicious of him, you’re the ones who followed him to Daly City. Leave me out of it entirely.”

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“Not much of this is the way I want it,” I said. “Most of it is just plain lousy.”

He didn’t know what I was talking about. And just as well he didn’t ask because I was through with him, too, for tonight and for good.