“Andy, he’s out for coffee ‘r somethin’?”
Kaler began, “Listen, asshole, when—” then his cop eyes took in the policeman ID included on Dain’s visitor’s badge. He shrugged in wry apology, swiveled to face Dain. “Tough morning. You know Andy?”
“Y’know.” Dain shrugged in turn. “I wrote I’d be in town, he was supposed to be pullin’ a file for me to look at.”
Kaler leaned back and locked his hands behind his head in a lazy manner. “Well, I got some good news and some bad news. Andy’s in the hospital. Seems he stuck that hard fucking Swede head of his into something wasn’t any of his business, and somebody tried to knock it off.”
“What’s the bad news?” asked Dain, deadpan.
Kaler gave a short hard bark of laughter.
“Yeah, you know our Andy, all right. Bad news is he’ll live.” He came forward in his chair, the unoiled swivel creaking when he did. “I can snoop Andy’s desk for your note, and—”
Dain said very quickly, “No need to do that...” Then he seemed to catch himself. He seemed to make himself relax visibly. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said.
Kaler checked the In box, found the note, read it standing over Dain. “I like it,” he said finally, “especially all that you-know-what stuff. Tell me about that, and maybe I can...”
His voice trailed off. There was a $50 bill on the corner of the desk that had not been there before. He turned away, the trailing fingers of one hand sliding over the bill, palming it.
“I think I can find that file for you, Lieutenant Solomon.”
Kaler returned with the BROUSSARD, EVANGELINE file: every stripper passed through police hands a time or two. On top were the Broussard mug shots, front and side, her fingerprint cards, a thin sheaf of report forms. They leafed through it together. When Dain carelessly flipped the file closed, his fingernail flicked off the paper clip holding her mug shots in place.
“Shit, nothing here. Couple soliciting busts...”
“Yeah,” said Kaler, “couple indecent exposures when we hit a joint where she was dancing, couple of priors for the same thing down in New Orleans...” He gave a hearty laugh. “This chick has a hard time keeping her clothes on, don’t she?”
“You’ve no idea,” said Dain. He sighed. “Hell, it was worth a shot.” He stood up. When he did, his hand hit the file and knocked it off the edge of the desk. “Shit.”
Bending to retrieve it, he grunted slightly as if with effort. With his left hand he palmed the mug shots that had slid from the folder, stuck out his right to Kaler. They shook.
“Anyway, many thanks. What hospital’s Andy in? I gotta fly back this afternoon, but maybe—”
“Wouldn’t do any good, he’s still in intensive care.”
Dain shook his head. “Fuck of a note. Well, anyway, give him my best when you get in to see him.”
“Sure thing.”
Dain spent half a day working the O’Hare parking lots and shuttle buses with Broussard’s mug shots, then spent most of his flight to San Francisco studying them. Even with the flat police lighting and the dehumanizing circumstances, her beauty shone through. Exotic was a good word. Deep tan or dark skin, dark eyes that challenged the camera, the cops behind the camera... The surname suggested a reason for her dark rather wild beauty. As did the soliciting busts in New Orleans.
It was going to be another routine operation. He would find them, Maxton would get his bonds back, Zimmer would probably get roughed up a bit, and that would be that. He might as well be working for legitimate clients on the right side of the law for all the good this was doing him.
Who would need a hitman in the Jimmy Zimmer bond caper?
Homicide had been jumping all morning. A tourist from Cincinnati had wandered into Emergency at S.F. General complaining of a headache, then had fallen dead on the floor. They had found a .22 slug in his brain. The cabbie who delivered him to the hospital had picked him up on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin.
A thirteen-year-old shot a fourteen-year-old dead with an A/R on full automatic in the parking area of one of the Western Addition housing projects in an argument over a crack concession.
When police arrived at a rather nice Victorian on Elizabeth Street on a neighbor’s complaint, they found a seventy-three-year-old man watching Santa Barbara with a self-righteous set to his jaw and a bloody claw hammer in his hand. His sixty-eight-year-old wife lay on the floor in front of the TV. She had wanted One Life to Live.
In his private office Randy Solomon was working on the preliminary paperwork on the three killings. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, his jacket over the back of his chair.
Dain came through the open door. He was wearing horn-rims and a conservative three-piece suit and was carrying a slim attaché case. Randy hadn’t laid eyes on him for over a year. His face hardened as he did an exaggerated double take.
“Well, well, the big private eye. A whole year, nothin’, then here comes Jesus Christ. Down here slummin’, white boy?”
Dain sat down in the visitor’s chair.
“Why the hardnose, Randy?”
Solomon detoured around Dain to close the door, then came back so he could lean down into Dain’s face. He said softly, “I knew a guy once — young, sharp, good mind, good investigator. Sweet wife and a nice little kid. Just getting started on his own... looking for that big case...”
“And they all lived happily ever after,” said Dain.
Solomon ignored this. His voice was openly hostile.
“Know what I see now? A whore in a three-piece suit.”
“I do what I always did, Randy. Find people.”
“For the sleaze of the earth,” snapped Solomon hotly, “with that fag bookseller pimping for you.”
Dain was suddenly on his feet.
“What am I supposed to do, for fuck sake? Repos and wandering wives? The fuckers killed my family! Where else will I find them except outside the law?”
Solomon looked surprised, then chuckled and went around behind his desk. The tension suddenly went out of both men.
“Shit, I might of known. You getting anything?”
“Another day older and deeper in debt.”
“So why the fancy getup?”
“I’ve been at the stock exchange cavorting with the bulls and the bears.”
“Who’s winning?”
“This morning, the bulls. To be exact. Robert Farnsworth of Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth out of Chicago. Daddy sent him out here for three months of seasoning before giving him more control of the family brokerage business. Bobby-boy is best buddies with a guy I am seeking for a sort of connected Chicago lawyer named Maxton. This guy and an exotic dancer—”
“Teddy Maxton?”
“Yeah,” said Dain in surprise, “you know about him?”
Randy waved a vague hand. “He comes out here as consulting defense counsel every once in a while. He’s damned good in front of a jury.” His voice, eyes, hardened slightly. “Our Teddy the kind of guy hires a hitman?”
Dain shook his head. “I’m just paying the bills with this one.” He leaned forward in his chair, cleared his throat. “But I, ah, need a good wireman, Randy.”
“You know that stuff isn’t admissible in court,” chided Solomon. “And it sure as hell ain’t legal.”
“Admissible in court I don’t need, legal I don’t care about. I just think this Zimmer will be calling Farnsworth and I want to be listening in.”
Solomon tore a sheet from his memo pad, began writing on it. “Remember Moe Wexler?”
“Pensioned off six or seven years ago on a medical disability? Had a leg broken in about eight places...”