The four of them had jumped him outside this apartment. He remembered the husky Latino opening the car door in front of him... The terrible blows to the kidneys... Dimly, the kicking boots, the wash of blood on the concrete...
And the face, brown like his own, so close to his as he lay bleeding on the sidewalk. Whispering the words...
You touch my sister, man, ever again, you with the dead.
Might as well be. With the dead. He hadn’t touched any woman since then, because she might be the woman. Who had she been? Junior high school girl? Wetback chica? Neighborhood kid? Taquería waitress? Any of them, no matter how vulnerable to a man like Morales, might have a tough, fanatic, vindictive brother with a posse of his own.
It was not knowing which way to look that unmanned him.
That and the brown, whispering face so close to his.
With the dead, man.
He went into the bathroom, shivering in the morning chill, to reach around the plastic shower curtain and turn on the hot water so the stall would get good and steamy.
He’d told Kearny after they’d hit the auto dealership that he had to go home because he didn’t feel good. That had been a lie. Physically, he’d never felt better. The lost weight, the convalescent’s diet, the months of rehab...
But deep down inside, he was scared. Before the beating he would have looped back on his own backtrail, followed them until he had identified them, then dealt with them, one by one; for each, a beating for a beating. In fact, when the medics thought he was going to die, hatred of a face and a name — Esteban — pulled him through. But later hatred turned to fear. Coming back here late from repo work some night, would he find them outside this apartment waiting for him in the darkness?
Stop, Esteban! Stop! You have killed him!
The girl’s voice. But not her face. Not her name.
Trinidad Morales, unfeeling, cold-eyed, cold-hearted tough guy, once one of the best dam’ repomen around, was too goddam scared to go looking for the man who had done this to him.
Because this Esteban, whoever he was, had many amigos...
While Trin Morales had none.
Receptionist Jane Goldson’s desk was by DKA’s front door, Kearny’s at the far end of the office. In between were the skip-tracers and clerical staff who faced the street through steel-meshed windows. In case of legal trouble, Jane could stall while Kearny slipped upstairs or out the rear door to duck service.
Giselle was stuck behind Dan’s desk while he was out of town and the rest of the field men were out running down those scrumptious classic cars. As office manager she recognized the necessity of it: as a field agent she didn’t have to like it.
Ballard plunked down in the client’s seat across the desk.
“I noticed the look on your face when you were behind the wheel of that sweet little red Alfa,” he said. “What d’ya think that STATO license plate stands for? Status symbol?”
“ ‘Stato’ is ‘state’ in Italian, the car’s an Alfa Romeo, ergo, Alfa State, and you’re right, that’s what that little car puts me into, a state of bliss.” She sighed. “I can’t afford it.”
“It’ll go for only six, seven K at auction, and I bet Stan the Man would give you terms, maybe even knock down the price.”
She shook off her longing. “You have anything for me?”
“Like a classic car repo?”
“Exactly like that.”
They’d worked together for some nine years; there had been a time when they’d thought... but friendship and professional regard were better in the long run. The moment passed long ago.
“We got no paper trail,” said Larry.
She lifted resigned shoulders while indicating the files open on the desk in front of her. “You get behind this desk and find one, Hotshot. I’ll go into the field and have some fun.”
“Yo mama,” he said. He hiked his chair closer. “I talked with Stan at the bank yesterday. For some reason, they don’t want to auction off the classics we’ve already brought in.”
“He wants a full set. I’d love to have ’em all in the barn by the time Dan gets back from Chicago.”
Ballard’s frown drew vertical lines between his hard blue eyes and above his hawk nose.
“Wiley lives in a nice ’hood. What bothers me is him showing up in that Toyota at the dealership. I thought he’d be driving a classic.”
“You’re a genius, Larry! The Corolla’s gotta be his wife’s ride, bought and paid for. They switched cars.” She grabbed the phone. “I’ll check the registration and run them both through a credit rating service for relatives and references.”
Larry was on his feet. “I’ll go out and chat up his neighbors, then call in for whatever you dig up.”
“Call in? You?” She laughed. “That’ll be the day.”
The hunt was on; suddenly she felt fine. She didn’t even miss her cigarettes. She forgot she was still behind a desk.
The Wileys’ brown-shingle two-story at 313 El Camino del Mar had an under-the-house garage and the steeply slanted roof wore a brass weather vane in the shape of a frisky whale. Two square bays gazed out through white-curtained double windows.
Ballard wore a drab tie with a small, tight knot as hard as a Calvinist’s mercy, and a nondescript blue suit five years out of date. Unneeded clear-glass specs peeked out of his breast pocket. He carried the private eye’s greatest prop, a clipboard.
Plod up terrazzo steps, ring-ring. A dissatisfied woman in her thirties, obviously just got husband and kids off, sitting down with the newspaper and her third cup of coffee.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m with the Underwriters Bureau. We’re conducting interviews in selected upscale San Francisco neighborhoods about the make and model of automobile each member of your household drives...” And her neighbors’ cars? Nothing.
Buzz-buzz. A seventy-something retiree with bristling eyebrows.
“Good morning, sir, here’s my card — the Underwriters Bureau of the National Auto Agency. We’re surveying...” No.
Knock-knock. A brown face, tight, reserved, watchful.
“Good morning, ma’am... Oh. No habla inglés? The lady of the house is... Yes, I see, thank you...”
On his seventh house, across the street and down three from Wiley’s, he caught a break: a lanky teenager with a spotty chin and an almost-shaven head was home with the flu, Classic Coke in hand. Jeans three sizes too big just barely hung on snakelike hips. Loud rap music came to the door with him.
“I’ve been watching you work the street for the last hour, and you never write anything down on that clipboard.”
Little brother is watching.
“Between you and me, I’m a repoman after information.”
“Cool! Remember that movie on cable — Repo Man? This one scene, Harry Dean Stanton is hiding out in a hospital room and he gets away just before the cops bust in. One cop says, ‘Where is he?’ just as the preacher on the TV over the bed says—”
“ ‘He is risen.’ ” Ballard had his arms spread wide like the Sermon on the Mount. They both burst out laughing.
“So whose car are you after?”
“Big John Wiley’s.”
“That jerk? He drives a ’62 Corvette roadster, white body with a red interior, 327/auto trans, Wonderbar radio, all original. Yesterday morning he went off in his wife’s Corolla, she left in the ’Vette. ’Cause of you, right?”
Bingo. “Have you seen the Corvette around since?”
He shook his head. “Another lady looked like Mrs. Wiley only younger drove her home about noon in a 2000 gold Saturn so new it still had paper plates. She stayed a couple of hours.”