Treasure Hunt

14

The headquarters for the Mission Street Coalition’s moving company occupied two large warehouses and an office that was little more than a shed in the light industrial neighborhood a couple of blocks off Cesar Chavez Boulevard between the 101 and 280 freeways.

Mickey, clueless, drove out to the Coalition’s residential home on Dolores, got there at about nine-thirty, then asked around and at the desk for Damien Jones. The administrative bureaucracy at the home wasn’t the most organized system Mickey had ever encountered, and it took him nearly a half hour to hunt down Damien’s likely whereabouts, and he only succeeded then because, inadvertently, he had run into the executive director of the program, Jaime Sanchez, and his wife, Lola.

Identifying himself for what he was, an associate with the Hunt Club, Mickey had explained that Mr. Jones had called the reward hotline number at the office yesterday and apparently had some information relating to the murder of Dominic Como. This seemed to surprise and slightly displease both of the Sanchezes. They couldn’t imagine what that might be or why Damien hadn’t told them first. But nevertheless Mr. Sanchez directed Mickey to the moving company’s headquarters, where he arrived at ten-twenty only to discover that Mr. Jones was out with a moving crew on a job at Forty- second Avenue, almost to the beach, and a good half hour’s drive, or more, from headquarters.

Before he started that drive, though, Mickey took a frustration break and called his sister at the office, giving her the play-by-play of his morning so far, which had produced nothing at all even in the limited realm of eliminating spurious claims to the reward money. “So now I’m off to Forty-second Avenue! Forty-second Avenue! That’s like five blocks before you leave the continent, do you realize that? The way this morning’s going I’m not even going to lay eyes on this Jones guy until noon, and that’s if he’s not on his lunch break someplace else. And all for what? So I can get to meet another Blimp Lady, except this guy’s a guy? This is dumb. Isn’t there somebody else I can check out? Did that girl ever call back? I can check out Damien Jones when he comes back home tonight, if he does. If his name’s even Jones, which now that I think about it, it probably isn’t. Well?”

“Well, what, Mick? Did you ask me a question?”

“I bet I asked you a hundred in there.”

“Try one again. One.”

“Okay. Have we gotten any new calls?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Who? Hang-up Lady?”

“Not her. Not yet. But actually, we’ve gotten three more. The bad news being that they all sound to me like Wyatt’s going to give them to you. If I had to bet.”

“Are they closer than Damien Jones? I mean physically closer? Maybe I can see one of them on the way out to see him. Or all of them.”

“I think maybe you should wait until Wyatt decides, don’t you?”

His sister’s voice of calm reason finally made an impact. Mickey let out a deep sigh into the telephone and said, “Probably.” He took another breath. “Speaking of which, you get any word from him?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. The guy he met this morning? He thinks he might have come up with the murder weapon.”

“Yes!” News of success on any front pumped Mickey right up. “What is it?”

“A tire iron they found in the lagoon. He’s called Devin and they should be over there by now.”

“That is so great,” Mickey said. “Do you think this reward thing might actually work, Sis? Would that be cool, or what?”

“Very cool, Mickey, very cool. But let’s just see what happens. See if the tire iron… I mean if they can tell. And then where it leads, if anywhere. But at least it’s something. Some real evidence. Maybe.”

“Okay,” Mickey said.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I’m motivated again. We’ll keep doing it this way. Meanwhile, what are you doing for lunch?”

She hesitated. “I haven’t really thought about it. I had a huge breakfast, you know, this morning.”

“I remember. But they’ve got this new theory where you can eat two, or even three, meals in one day, and it won’t kill you. In fact, it might even be good for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get something,” she said.

“You’d better. There’ll be a quiz on what it was when I get back.”

Damien Jones, at long last.

Mickey got the strong impression that Damien’s boss wasn’t happy to give him time off for this interview, but Mickey had told him the half-truth that Mr. Sanchez had directed him how to find Mr. Jones, intimating that the big boss himself wanted the interview to proceed.

Now Mickey and Damien had walked a few houses down the street from the move-in job site and were sitting on concrete steps leading up to one of the other houses. Out here, the gray cloud cover was thick, but high enough that it wasn’t quite fog. In spite of that, every few minutes, the deep bass of a foghorn punctuated the early afternoon stillness.

Since Mr. Jones had called with information that seemed to have at least an oblique relevance to the investigation, Mickey found that he had to summon all of his patience as it quickly became obvious that Damien was under the influence of some kind of controlled substance. During the first few questions, trying to establish a rapport with the young workman, it wasn’t even obvious that Damien remembered the substance of his call to the Hunt Club the previous night.

So Mickey gently prodded. “You said something about the fact that the foundation was supposed to pay for your room and board, but now you were paying. And it wasn’t fair.”

“Right. Right.”

“And that Mr. Como didn’t do the same thing at his place. The Sunset Youth Project.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. And that this somehow had something to do with his murder.”

Damien sat on the step with his elbows on his knees, staring straight in front of him, to all appearances stumped. After a minute, he laughed softly to himself, hung his head, and shook it. “Seemed like I had it all worked out last night, but that wasn’t exactly it, what you just said.”

Mickey nodded, all understanding. Although he knew that if this was all he was going to get after the four hours he’d spent tracking this bozo down, he’d be sorely tempted to kill him. Still, he reined himself in and managed to sound sincere. “That’s all right,” he said.

“But that don’t mean it isn’t true.”

Mickey wasn’t clear what antecedent Damien was referring to here and, in fact, was reasonably sure that Damien couldn’t identify it himself. But all he said was, “No, I know.”

“I mean, it’s a racket, you know.”

“What is?”

“The whole, you know, the rehab thing.”

“A racket?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that?”

“Well.” Damien looked up the street, making sure he was still out of earshot. The foghorn sounded, and he continued. “You know, they collecting money from the foundations. Big money.”

Suddenly Mickey felt a chill raise the hairs on his arms. Unbidden, the discussion he’d had with Alicia Thorpe the other day about the Sunset Youth Project’s funding from the city and from other foundations came back to him in sharp detail, particularly her disclosure that the city’s Health Services Department was the biggest single line item in the city’s budget. And now here was Mr. Jones, no relation to Mr. Einstein, referring to the same thing. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything, except for the rather salient fact that Mr. Jones, addled as he might be or might have been last night, somehow was introducing this funding issue into a discussion about Dominic Como’s murder.

And now, it seemed, Jones had found a scent. And it was Mickey’s job to keep him on it. “Right,” he said. “So the Mission Street Coalition gets money from the city. So what?”

“So what is they s’posed to use that to keep up the program. But it don’t go to no program.”

“So where’s it go, Damien?”

“Now, that I wish I knew.” He clucked in disappointment. “But, oh, yeah, this what I was sayin’. The whole thing is, they get me, ’stead of jail, into the program here, okay?”

“Right.”

“Okay, the thing is, they ain’t no program to the program. You know what I’m sayin’?”

Thinking, Patience, young Jedi, Mickey said, “Not exactly. Maybe you can tell me.”

“Okay, here’s the thing. We here for the rehab, you know. Otherwise, we maybe in jail, right? Right. So we get here, ain’t nobody doin’ that twelve-step shuffle, ain’t nobody urine testing, we just come in and say, ‘No, we ain’t doin’ no shit,’ and sign this form, and then we done. Except they make us work.”

Getting a little wound up now, Damien Jones’s expressive face went into a deep frown. “Hey! Look at me, now. Whatchu think I been doin’ all day ’cept humping these loads? And the company, the Coalition, they chargin’ the same as like Bekins, you know, the moving people. And they s’posedly payin’ us fair, but we don’t never get to see no money. See what I’m sayin’? That’s the money goes for rent and food, my money. Not no foundation money. So where’s all that foundation money go? That’s what I want to know. So bottom line is they got me workin’ for a year, payin’ all the bills here, and meanwhile I don’t do every little thing they ask, I’m out of the program and back in jail. You want to know the truth, they got theirselves a bunch a slaves workin’ here, nothin’ less, and I’m one of ’em. And that ain’t right.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mickey said. “And I’m glad you decided to tell me about all this. But you called last night originally about the reward, and I’m afraid if this doesn’t have anything to do with the murder of Dominic Como… well, you know what I’m saying, don’t you?”

For a long minute, Mickey thought he’d lost Damien for good. The faraway stare came back, the exhausted elbows-on-his-knees posture. Methodically, he bobbed his head as though listening to his own private soundtrack. Then, when at last he spoke, Mickey could barely hear him. “You know them Battalion people out there?”

Again, one of Alicia’s references, “sort of an urban Peace Corps,” and Mickey snapped back to full attention. “What about them?”

“Well, brothers I know in there, they gettin’ paid, all right, and they don’t do no real work, so I’m thinkin’ how’s that happen and how do I get some of that?”

“What do you mean, they don’t do work?”

Damien rolled his eyes, explaining the obvious. “I mean work like I’m doing. Humpin’ loads, cleanin’ up, sweepin’, kitchen work, like that.”

“So what do they do?”

“Whatever Dominic Como says.”

“Ah.” The explanation didn’t really turn any light on for Mickey, but now at least Como was overtly in the conversation. Now the trick was to keep him there. “So you’re saying what, exactly?”

“Well, first, I want to get me some of that.”

“That might be a little difficult, Damien, since Como’s dead now.”

“Okay, yeah, okay. But I’m talking if…” Here his eyes brightened, his whole demeanor perked up, and he snapped his fingers. “Here it is! Here it is! Thinkin’ on the reward now, what I got last night!”

“Hit me.”

“Okay, I’m in that Battalion, right. Like the most I got to do is wash a car or pass out some pamphlets or answer some phones, some shit like that, basically nothing, you with me?”

“So far.”

“So say I fuck up a little, maybe go off the rehab, something small-maybe a doob or a beer one time. You know they test out there, not like here. Anyway, who knows why, I get on Como’s bad side and now he’s tellin’ me I’m done with the Battalion, I’m back in the shit, workin’ like I’m doin’ here. Or say, even better, I’m close to done with my time, and he says he’s gonna violate me back to jail, out of the program. See what I’m sayin’ now?”

“Still not completely, I’m afraid.”

“Hey, he kicks me out now, I am fucked. I can’t let that happen. I got to stop him before, you know?”

“So you kill him?”

Damien Jones threw his hands up in celebration, flashed Mickey his brightest smile. “Now you got it. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.” He kept nodding as though making sure that the strands of his argument, if that’s what it was, held together. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.” Now he looked straight at Mickey. “That’s where you look, at them Battalion people. It’s one of them, hallelujah, and you know where to find me.”

Suddenly and thoroughly deflated, Mickey all at once came to the full-blown realization that in spite of Damien’s enthusiastic narrative, he was in his own way another variant on the Blimp Lady. If not nuts, then certainly and fundamentally unhelpful.

By now just about completely baffled by trying to fathom the solution that Damien had apparently reached and was sharing with him, Mickey leaned in toward the young man. “And, just so I’m sure I understand, Damien, you’re saying you think Mr. Como’s killer is one of these Battalion people?”

“I’m saying you look there I bet you gonna be happy you did.”

“And if we do, after that, why exactly do we need to find you, then?”

Damien straightened his back, put on a look of surprised indignation. “What we been talkin’ ’bout all this time? First, I get his place in the Battalion out there, the killer’s, and second, ’cause then you got to give me that reward.”

Hunt had called Devin Juhle and Sarah Russo within minutes of his initial sighting of the tire iron, but they’d been in the field on another matter and hadn’t checked back in with him until lunchtime. Meanwhile, he’d taken down Cecil Rand’s vitals and promised to keep him anonymous at least until it was determined if the tire iron out in the mud was tied in any way to the death of Dominic Como.

After Rand had gone, Hunt then tried again to reach Nancy Neshek, but she hadn’t come in to her office at Sanctuary House this morning-evidently a regular occurrence, what with her fund-raising duties and/or women in crisis situations, and she still wasn’t answering at home.

He’d then checked in with Tamara to see about any new leads. He decided that talking to two more people who identified themselves as members of Canard’s Palace Duck group probably wasn’t even worth Mickey’s time, and he himself wasn’t inclined to call Belinda (no last name), a psychic who, if put in close contact with Como’s body, could re-create his last hours, and thus probably shed enormous light on the murder.

And reluctant to abandon his post lest someone come and remove his possible evidence while no one was guarding it, he put his back up against a tree and waited.

Now, finally, Juhle and Russo stood with Hunt at the concrete edge of the mud flat that had once been the lagoon. The cloud cover had mostly burned off and now the mud had a dull shine, making identification of anything somewhat problematic. “And even if I see it, which I don’t,” Juhle was saying, “how do you know it has anything to do with anything?”

“I don’t. But it’s there, all right,” Hunt said. “And since it might be evidence in a murder you’re investigating, I thought you’d call those fine upstanding people from Crime Scene Investigations to collect it for you.”

“I’m going to go look at it,” Russo said.

“Are you shitting me?” Juhle asked. “It’s knee-deep mud out there, Sarah. And you can’t touch it till CSI gets here anyway.”

“I’m not going to touch it. But we’re not calling CSI if it turns out it’s a pipe that’s been in this lagoon for a hundred years. You guys watch my shoes.” And she sat on the wall and started removing them.

“All right.” Juhle sat next to her. “God damn it. I’ll do it.”

“Aw, Dev. You’re so cute when you get all guy-protective.” She held out a hand to him. “But, I’m good, really. I’m a mom, after all. I’ve already waded through tons and tons of shit. And this is only mud. I’ll think of it as a spa treatment. But you, Wyatt,” she added, “you better point me straight at it or I’ll arrest your sorry ass on any charge I can think of or even one I make up.”

Hunt turned to Juhle. “She’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“You want to see harsh, point me even a little bit the wrong way.” And so saying, she finished tucking her socks into her shoes. Next she rolled up the bottoms of her pants and swung herself around, lowering herself into the mud, into which she sank as far as her ankles. “For the record,” she said, “this is not warm spa mud.” After a good shiver, she added, “Okay, Wyatt, point.”

Hunt stood at the charcoal X that Rand had drawn with his cigar the night before. He had a decent idea of the location of the tire iron and pointed out a tree on the opposite bank that Russo should head for. “It’s ten or twelve feet before you get to the water. You can’t miss it.”

She turned back to him. “I’d better not, ’cause I tell you right now I’m not going to spend a lot of time mucking around looking for it.”

It was, truly, one slippery step at a time, and she walked gingerly. When she was about halfway there, Hunt said, “I’d have thought you’d have dragged this lake already.”

“We did. We took out six Dumpsters of shit.”

“So how’d you miss this?”

“I don’t know. Murphy’s Law.” Juhle grunted. “Anyway, we’re here now, for all the good it’s going to do us.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because the water washes away the trace evidence. Except not all of it, not all the time. We’ll see.”

Just at this moment a black-and-white police car pulled to the curb above them and emitted a short one-note blast of his siren. Hunt and Juhle turned and saw two uniformed policemen coming out of the car and down the grass, looking stern and ready for action. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” the lead cop said, “would you mind telling me…?”

But Juhle already had stepped in front of Hunt with his ID out. Introducing himself, saying the magic word homicide, Juhle instantly transformed the cops into two nice guys who wanted to know if there was anything they could do to help.

“She’s got it,” Hunt said.

And sure enough, Russo was straightening up out in the middle of the mud, waving her arms.

Juhle turned back to the cops. “Actually, guys, you can help. One of you please call dispatch and have ’ em get CSI down here as fast as they can move. Tell them it’s the Como one eighty-seven.”

Lorraine Hess, associate director of the Sunset Youth Project, stood wringing her hands in her office doorway, facing the two police inspectors. “But you’re saying you don’t know if it’s from the limousine yet, is that right?”

“That’s right.” Sarah Russo, naturally taking point with the obviously distracted woman, nodded and spoke in her well-modulated, educated, nonthreatening voice. “All we’ve done so far is sent the tire iron itself directly down to the police laboratory for analysis. And all we know so far is that it’s the basic kind of tire iron that comes standard on a lot of cars, including the Lincoln Town Car. There’s a small chance, if it was the murder weapon, that it will still have at least traces of Mr. Como’s hair or blood or something recoverable through DNA, although maybe not. In any event, though, the thing’s a mess and it’s going to take some time, maybe a lot of time, to find out what we’re dealing with there for sure.” She trotted out her professional smile, which looked entirely genuine. “In the meanwhile, Inspector Juhle and I got to talking and realized that it would probably be worth our while to see if there was still a tire iron in Mr. Como’s limousine.”

“But why?” Hess asked. “I thought the limousine was back here by the time he was murdered. That’s what we’ve heard.”

Juhle decided to speak up. “That may be true, but-”

“It is true, I believe, Inspector.”

“Well, be that as it may, if the tire iron is in fact missing”-Juhle shrugged, nonchalant-“it at least opens the door to the possibility that someone from here at Sunset might have been involved in the murder.”

“But the tire iron could be gone from the limo and still not have been the murder weapon.”

“Yes, of course,” Sarah said. “And by the same token, if it isn’t gone, then we’re pretty much back where we started. It could be any tire iron from any one of hundreds of cars in the city. Anyway, the point is, with your permission we’d just like to look.”

Hess brushed a vagrant hair away from her forehead. “Well, sure. I mean, that goes without saying, but don’t you need a warrant or something like that?”

Juhle flashed a glance at Russo at the unexpected question. He cleared his throat. “A warrant would give us the absolute right to take that car apart and look all through it,” he said, “and I’m sure we could get one in short order. But we thought we could save some time and energy trying to find Mr. Como’s killer by just coming out here and asking if we could check the trunk, that’s all.”

“Right,” Hess said. “Of course.”

“Parked along the side, right?” Russo asked. “Do you have a set of keys?”

“Yes, and, yes, I’m sure I’ve got a spare bunch of them here somewhere, or maybe in Dominic’s office. Can you give me a minute?”

Russo nodded. “All the time you need.”

Hess turned and went back into her office, opened a drawer or two, sighed, closed the drawers again, then came by the inspectors again and walked across the lobby and into Como’s office.

“A little nervous, don’t you think?” Juhle whispered.

“She doesn’t want to think it’s one of her people.”

“I’d think she’d be happy for the chance to prove it’s probably not any of them. I mean, if the tire iron’s there…”

“I know what you’re saying. But the more I think about it, what does that really mean? If it’s there, it means nothing. If it’s not there, by itself it means nothing either.”

“It means somebody took it out.”

“Big deal. When? Six months ago? Yesterday? And even if our very own tire iron from the lagoon is what killed him, how do we know it’s that particular limo’s tire iron after all?”

“We don’t. That’s what makes this job so much fun. But it might, in fact, narrow the field. And you agreed to come out here, if you remember.”

“I just don’t know what we’re going to do if we find it’s gone.”

“If it is, it’ll lead to something. You just watch.”

“Great,” she said. “Words to live by.”

And then Lorraine Hess emerged from Dominic Como’s office, holding up a set of keys, wearing a smile that managed to be hopeful and fearful at the same time.

After swearing that she’d walked down to Union Square and bought a hot dog with lemonade and fries for lunch, Tamara gave Mickey the three names on the phone when he called in after the complete strikeout with Damien Jones.

But hearing about the duck people and Belinda the psychic, Mickey decided he’d be damned if he was going to talk to any of them. Getting together with nutcases who at least had some kind of a whacked-out story-Damien or the Blimp Lady-was one thing; but wasting his time with automatic fruitcakes like Belinda, for example, wouldn’t help the police or the Hunt Club. There was such a thing as an automatic, commonsense pass on certain people, and he’d make that point to Wyatt the next time he saw him. Meanwhile, he told Tamara to call him if the mysterious Hang-up Lady or any more or less legitimate crazy person called back and needed to have their evidence debunked, but meanwhile he was going to try to call on another source for inside information about Dominic Como.

“Say hi to her for me.”

Dang. How did she know?

But Alicia didn’t pick up when he called her on her cell phone, so he left a message and then tried her brother and got another strikeout. It was turning out to be that kind of day. So he drove back on Lincoln alongside Golden Gate Park, a plan for the next couple of hours developing in his mind.

When he got to the Panhandle at the east end of the park, he found a parking spot and walked back to the bocce court that hid itself very effectively beneath the cypresses. Maybe his luck was changing, because there, as he’d hoped, in the company of three other old geezers was his grandfather, lining up a shot. Mickey waited until he’d thrown-a damn good roll that stopped inside all the other balls and only a couple of inches from the jack. It must have been the last shot of the round, since it drew enthusiastic applause from Parr’s team and good- natured snarling obscenities from the other men as all of them started walking down the court to pick up.

When they turned back, Jim saw Mickey and raised a hand. “You see that shot?” he asked. “I’m on fire today. We’re up eight three this game. You know all these reprobates?” As Mickey nodded all around, Jim asked, “Everything all right? Tamara okay?”

“Yeah, she’s good. She loves being back at work, I’ll tell you that. Otherwise, everything’s fine except nobody in the world is home, which makes it hard to hook up with people. So since I’ve got the time I thought I’d go get something for dinner and then I thought I’d stop by and see if there’s anything you especially felt like.”

Jim shrugged. “You make it, it’s going to be good, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Even goat?”

Another shrug. “Never had it. Can you just go out and buy goat?”

“Sure. Bi-Rite’s got it. They can get anything. You’d really eat goat if I made it?”

“I’d eat anything, Mick. You know me. You might check with Tam, though. She might have some thoughts on goat.”

“I’m thinking of inviting somebody else over too.”

“Whatever,” Jim said. “I’m easy.”

One of the bocce players called over and Jim told him to keep his fucking shirt on, then came back to his grandchild. “So how’s the case going?”

“Decently, I guess. Tam thinks Wyatt might have found the murder weapon. Meanwhile, I’m eliminating the bad tips and getting to meet a really fun whole new class of people that I’d never otherwise get to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Apparently sane whack-jobs.”

“No, not what’s the fun new class of people, Mick. What’s the murder weapon?”

“A tire iron, maybe.”

Jim Parr’s face hardened. “Bastard. You getting any closer to who did it?”

“Not that I know of. Maybe there’ll be fingerprints or something on the tire iron, but that would be a long shot. So probably not.”

“Shit. Maybe I should just go out there.”

“Where?”

“Sunset.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. Talk to some people. See if they’d talk to me. Find out what was really happening.”

“I’ve got a better idea, Jim. Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a really dumb idea, that’s why not.”

“Well, it’s hard for me to believe that nobody out there knows anything at all. I mean, Dominic just has a regular day of work and then goes home and meets somebody who kills him? Somebody must have known or seen something, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I do. But we can’t seem to get started down any trail that leads anyplace.”

“All I’m saying is maybe I could.”

“Right. And why is that? Because you’re a trained investigator?”

“Hey, smart-ass, I’m as trained as the next guy. If I heard something important, I know for damn sure I’d recognize it. I know those people out there.”

“But we don’t know it’s one of them.”

“Well, that just goes to show what you know.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, it’s staring you right in the face and you don’t see it.”

“What is?”

“The plain, simple truth about Dominic, which is that Sunset was his whole life. He lived and breathed it, morning, noon, night, weekends, holidays. His. Whole. Life. Get it? If somebody killed him, and it wasn’t completely random, it had to have something to do with Sunset. Period. Maybe only a little bit. But something. Which means it’s probably right there if you know what to look for.”

This speech, since there was little to refute in it, shut Mickey right up. He took a few deep breaths through his nose, his mouth a tight line. “You might be right about that,” he said finally, “but you going out there is still a dumb idea.”

“Oh. Okay, then. I won’t.”

“Jim.”

“No. You convinced me. I promise I won’t go out there.”

“A promise is a promise, you know.”

“Absolutely. Scout’s honor too. Now listen, I’ve got to get back to kicking some ass in my game, and you’ve got to go buy some goat. I’ll see you tonight, all right?”

“Right.”