Inga was still lost. “If Paul didn’t know about it—”
“You don’t have to tell someone you’re taking out an insurance policy on them,” said Giselle. “She insured him herself — naming Eddie Graff as beneficiary. But Eddie ran out on her and she got nervous and asked Stan Groner to find him. Dan Kearny found him instead, got curious—”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Karen. “I made myself Eddie’s beneficiary. He’s going to burn up in a tragic fire aboard the Basic Pascal — along with you three.”
That’s when Dan Kearny, stretched out on his stomach on the deck outside the open companionway, shot her through the right shoulder with the gun he had taken off Eddie Graff.
Saturday night and the joint was jumping. More than jumping, SRO, people around the walls. Waiting. Lots of spear-chuckers, but Bagnis didn’t care. Their money was as good as anyone else’s. Go figure, fat old broad like that; but man, she could belt those blues. Filling the house and he wasn’t paying them a goddam dime! He was gonna get rich off his cut of the Mood Indigo take.
Maybelle walked out on stage wearing her shiny red dress, followed by Sleepy Ray Sykes and Fingers Jefferson, the hornman who had joined them from the floor the night before. Everyone burst into applause. Maybelle was blushing, a warm rosy glow under her rich brown skin.
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern sidled in to take up positions on either side of the door. Old Charlie Bagnis was due for a little surprise. Conspiracy to commit damned near every felony on the books...
Up on stage, Sleepy Ray noodled a few chords, Fingers blew a few soft notes through his horn to soften his lip. Maybelle hummed softly, finding that place inside herself she’d thought had been lost forever when Jedediah had been taken from her. The place that hurt but that God and song could soothe.
“Let’s blow this house away,” said Maybelle, and sang:
They indeed blew that house away. And blew away Neil MacDonald, entertainment director for the St. Mark Hotel, right along with it. He leaned over to speak into his wife’s ear.
“I’ve just found our new headline act for the main room.”
Yes sir, a real old-time San Francisco blues singer who would counteract all the negative publicity the hotel had been getting from their opposition to the Local 3 strike.
The United flight arrived from Detroit just after midnight on Sunday morning. One of the first people off the plane was Corinne Jones, the most beautiful woman in the world, wearing a new fawn-colored spring coat and a manycolored silk scarf that set off her Nefertiti face and café au lait skin perfectly.
She came toward Bart with shining eyes and open arms, then her steps faltered as she looked up at her shaven-headed man. She took in his fatigue-rimmed eyes and his battered face. She couldn’t see the missing teeth, but she soon would.
She did just what Bart had laid odds with himself she would do. She stamped her foot. “Barton Heslip,” she said ominously, “what have you been up to while Mama’s been gone?”
He enfolded her in muscular arms, clung to her as if he would never let her go. Which, of course, he never would.
“Baby,” he said, “that’s a very long story.”
After a bit, she let him take her carry-on and they started off arm in arm through the echoing, now sparsely populated terminal toward the luggage carousels a weary quarter mile away.
“We got all night,” she said cheerfully, then deepened and ghettoed her voice. “Ah hopes you done made lots of money.”
“Who needs money?” said Bart Heslip. “I got you.”
At about the same time, Larry Ballard was standing on the top step of Amalia Pelotti’s stairs, talking very fast. He’d gotten her out of bed, so she was in her robe and slippers. He couldn’t help wondering what she had on underneath it.
“And that’s how I got this broken nose,” he ended up. Because of the tape across his face, it came out, “Dad’s how Ah god did broked node.”
“And Griffin Paris dead.”
“Yeah. It’s over. Now everything is straight between us.” He moved up to the top step. “So I was hoping—”
“It doesn’t explain what you were doing over at that woman’s bar after making love to me all night,” said Amalia.
And belted him right in the mouth, broken nose or not, and down he went again, thud, crash, boom, to end up in a jumbled heap at the foot of the stairs.
“Now everything is straight between us,” said Amalia.
Ballard stared up at her and wondered for the first time in his life whether he had met a woman just too passionate for him to climb to his feet and start up those stairs again...
Trinidad Morales found street parking, finally, way up on Potrero across from San Francisco General Hospital, walked the four and a half blocks home to Florida Street. Everybody who might have a hard-on against him was dead. He could walk easy.
A husky Latino opened the rider’s door of a car at the curb in front of Trin’s apartment, and got out. At the same time, Trin heard a grunt of effort behind him. He started to whirl, and something terrible and heavy struck him in the kidney.
He arched and shrieked with the pain as a foot slammed into the side of his knee, tearing ligaments. Morales went down, four of them were on him like junkyard dogs. He went into a fetus curl, arms up trying to protect his head. They didn’t.
The kicks got to be like rain on the roof, almost soothing. He felt himself soaring up and away, maybe leaving his body...
His ears were full of blood, but he heard voices as through a storm door. “Stop, Esteban! Stop! You have killed him!”
“Bastard’s too mean to die.” The eye not yet swollen entirely shut could just barely make out a face inches from his own. A brown face, like his own. Full of hate and contempt. A Latino voice soft in his bleeding ear. “You touch my sister, man, ever again, you with the dead. With the dead, man.”
Morales went away from there. He didn’t know anything. Then he knew light. A voice. As through a storm door.
“Massive concussion, lots of broken bones... but this one is tough enough to make it if he wants to bad enough.”
“That smashed up, how can he even know he wants anything?”
She was right. Just let it slip away. So easy, drift into nothingness. Couldn’t remember which one it was anyway... junior high girl... neighborhood kid... wetback chica... who? Did it matter? They all got off on the Morales swagger, the Morales machismo... couldn’t remember... didn’t matter... nothingness forever... nice... just slip... aw... aaay...
No! Had to live. Esteban... had to find Esteban... and his buddies... one by one...
Danny Marenne lay there and thought he was a mummy, wrapped seemingly from head to foot in bandages. Tight constrictions of tape around his chest — and no pain. No pain!
Danny opened his eyes. Lovely white ceiling of sterile acoustical tile. Hospital. Where? How?
A dearly known voice said, “You’re in Marin General, Danny. You’re okay. You’re safe... safe...”
He turned his bandage-swatched head and saw Beverly sitting in a straight-back chair beside his hospital bed. Cute, beautiful little Beverly. He thanked God he had kept her right out of it, out of all of it. Behind her, dawn light poured in through a window. He could see the tops of green trees on a hill flanking the hospital.