Trin got to the Ocean Avenue BART station, way out where Geneva passes over the 280 freeway, at 12:30 A.M. Drove the whole neighborhood, noting every pedestrian, checking parked cars for heads backlit by the headlights of approaching vehicles.
Nobody had the station staked out.
By 1:15 A.M. he knew every parked car, every shadow that could hold a man, every possible approach. He parked on San Jose facing Geneva, where he could see the BART station pedestrian overpass with a turn of his head. He slumped behind the wheel and waited.
With a start, O’B sat bolt upright behind the wheel still slant-parked on the Sonoma square. Not again! Asleep just like last time — not booze, at least, just exhaustion — but just like last time, Tim Bland could have driven by him a dozen times.
He checked his watch with bleary eyes. One-fifty A.M. Bar-close time. Bland wouldn’t be driving by this night. Just time to walk across the park for an O’Doul’s and a couple of bags of pretzels at the General Vallejo to sustain him on the long frustrating empty-handed drive home to the city.
The pseudo-Spanish mission bar had lots of old drawings of Vallejo’s hacienda when it had been that Spanish officer’s stronghold, and of San Francisco’s Presidio when it still had been a Spanish fortification. Old muskets and sabers were crossed on the walls; there were Bowie knives, sombreros, serapes, and, hanging from a cross rafter, a pair of cracked Spanish leather officers’ boots complete with big-roweled spurs.
All that was missing was the mark of Zorro, and a husky man with a deeply lined face was trying to put that on the tall lean blonde behind the bar. His deep tan stopped in an abrupt line two inches above his eyes; obviously, out in all weather with a wide-brimmed hat pulled down on his head.
As O’B slid onto a stool, the guy said, “Aw, c’mon, Sonja, it’s Friday an’ I know your old man’s out of town until Monday. It’s party time!”
Sonja had high cheekbones, blue eyes full of mischief, and thin red lips curved with humor. She was dressed frontier style: tight jeans, high-heel boots of tooled leather, a red-checked cowboy shirt with the top three buttons undone, a bandanna around her shapely brown throat. Hmmm. Just Tim Bland’s type.
She leaned across the bar and stuck her face quite close to that of the husky man.
“Gus, I don’t know what the hell gave you the idea that I cheat on my husband, but if I did it sure as hell wouldn’t be with you.” She winked at O’B as she pointed Gus toward the door. “Closing time, big boy. Go home and give Carmen my love.”
“She’s at her ma’s place in Salinas for the weekend, that’s the trouble.”
“Then go home and lock yourself in the bathroom with a Hustler.” As Gus shambled out, she gave O’B an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Red, but last call is already past.”
O’B put a ten-dollar bill on the bar.
“A couple of bags of pretzels and an O’Doul’s? The ABC can’t bust you for that. I’ll even drink from the bottle.”
“Nonalcoholic O’Doul’s? Oh, what the hell — okay.”
She got the bottle from the cooler under the back bar, flipped off the top, set it down with two bags of pretzels. He drank deep as she went around turning off lights and the jukebox and brought the house phone up from behind the bar. O’B spun his stool around back-to-the-bar to give her the illusion of privacy.
“I’m closing up now, the last guy’s just leaving,” Sonja said behind him in a low, throaty voice. “When you get here, stick your head in and I’ll come out. I don’t want to stand around outside waiting, Tim — you don’t know what this town’s turned into.”
Right on. Tim didn’t know Sonoma, liked tall lean blondes, and screwed other guys’ wives. O’B drained his O’Doul’s, picked up his pretzels, waved off his change, and headed for the door.
“Thanks, Sonja,” he called as he went out.
Sprint across the square for his car? No. Play the odds. He stepped back into the shadows of a narrow alley that led to a courtyard of small shops and cafés.
Seven minutes brought the throaty growl of a sports car. It stopped with its dark green hood just visible from O’B’s ambush. Panoz kit car. Left in the street with the motor running as Bland crossed the sidewalk.
Tim Bland pulled open the door of the General Vallejo to stick his head in, and O’B walked unhurriedly out of the alley. He slid into the cockpit of the low gleaming green car crouched like a leopard in the street. Slamming it into gear, he fishtailed away around the square with Tim Bland’s shouts of outraged astonishment shredded by the wind of his passage.
Twenty-one
Milagrita came across the BART station’s pedestrian walkway at 2:01 A.M. She was wearing jeans and a 49ers warm-up jacket and had her hair tucked up under a Giants baseball cap. She was alone. Nobody crossed behind her. Morales was still in place on San Jose Ave, across Geneva from the old Green Muni Center crammed with antique trolley cars. He squealed the Accord around the corner and skidded to a stop right in front of her.
“Get in!” he yelled.
He was away so fast the open passenger-side door slammed shut behind Milagrita on its own. Only where Geneva merged into Ocean Avenue did he look over at her. She had opened her jacket and removed her cap and shaken out her long black hair. Red letters on her black T-shirt said SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH OR I’LL KILL YOU. Her eyes were very big, but her voice was strong.
“You had us meet way out here because you do not trust me.”
“I don’t trust nobody.”
“Then indeed I am sorry for you.”
“You gonna get in trouble being out this late?”
“I am almost nineteen,” she said proudly. “The phone number I gave you is an apartment I share with another girl. Esteban does not like it, but...” She shrugged. “Mi madre trusts me so he can do little about it.”
Almost nineteen. When he had nailed her in that Geneva Avenue motel room, he had thought she was sixteen, a juvie. It hadn’t bothered him: before Esteban’s attack, he had started to look at fourteen-, even thirteen-year-olds. Now he had been without a woman for so long he didn’t know what he’d like.
There was little traffic as they drove west on Ocean Avenue through a neighborhood of small businesses.
“Uh, I’m sorry what I did to you, Milagrita.”
It was the first time he could remember apologizing to anyone except in a sort of half-assed way to a giant iguana in Baja’s desert north of Cabo during the great Gypsy Cadillac hunt.
“It was wrong,” she agreed gravely, “but it is finished.”
“Not for your brother. He still has guys watching me.”
“Verdad,” she said seriously. “It is why I had to talk to you. When you came into the pizzeria today I meant what I said. He will try to kill you if he knows you have seen me.”
“I didn’t even know who you were!” Morales blurted out.
“I have always told Esteban that. After a time he saw you had no interest in any woman, so he was satisfied and would have given up. But one of Esteban’s amigos, Jorge, says I have been dishonored and that you must really pay for what you did.”
“Uh... do you... how do you feel about this Jorge guy?”
She was silent for a moment, her dark sleek head lowered.
“I hate him. Someday, because you have had me and he has not, he will try to take me the way you did, and make me keep silent about it afterward. But he feels you have challenged his machismo, so he wants you dead first. That is what I wanted to tell you. Esteban would give up, but Jorge, never.”