“You shouldn’t never steal somebody’s shoes,” Shelby Pate informed his neighbor. “It’s the worst mistake you can ever make.”
Bobbie Ann Doggett was beside herself with excitement. She thought about calling up the assistant director of security at North Island, but she knew he’d say what Fin would say: “It’ll all keep till tomorrow. Till you’re on duty and can work in a proper investigative environment.”
What could she do now anyway? Nobody was going anywhere. Abel Durazo was on ice, and so was his Tijuana contact, Soltero. Shelby Pate might also be lying in a Tijuana alley with a knife in his ample gut.
Jules Temple would be coming to his place of business tomorrow as usual, none the wiser as far as his employees’ fate was concerned. And how was she going to tie Jules Temple into all this? She wasn’t. Not unless Pate was still alive and willing to talk about it.
So far, everyone who’d come in contact with those navy shoes had ended up dead. Her boss would probably tell her that if she recovered the shoes, the navy ought to send them immediately to Saddam Hussein.
Bobbie sat and tried to read a magazine, cooling her heels until three o’clock. Then she rang up Fin and Nell once again. Bobbie was going bughouse.
After she hung up, she got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and strapped on her shoulder holster, concealing it under her most comfortable cardigan. Then she grabbed her purse and map book and headed for the house of Shelby Pate in National City.
She drove her Hyundai slowly through the ethnically mixed, working-class residential neighborhood, a district with lots of homeboy spider-script sprayed on all the walls. His house was easy to spot. It was the only one with the front door kicked off the hinges. The small yard was littered with articles of clothing, and a Harley hog sat menacingly in the driveway, aimed at the street.
A fleeting memory occurred to Bobbie. The director of security had once warned her that women in police work frequently take great risks because they don’t want to call for backup from the men until they’re sure they need it. But by then, it’s often too late. He’d warned that many female cops had been needlessly injured and even killed, for fear of seeming to be the damsel in distress.
He’d finished reading the paper, but found that he couldn’t concentrate on the Sunday talking-head shows blathering about Tuesday’s election as though everyone wasn’t already certain that George Bush was history. Jules had never cared anything about politics. He sat, channel grazing, when the phone rang.
“Hello,” he said, thinking it might be Lou Ross with details about the New York trip.
“It’s Shelby Pate, Mister Temple,” the voice said.
Jules was astonished. He caught his breath and said, “Yes?”
“I gotta talk to you today.”
“How’d you get my number?”
“Abel got it for me,” Shelby said, “a few days ago.”
“How’d he get it?”
“From Mary,” Shelby said. “He was fuckin her.”
“I see,” Jules said. “What do you wanna talk about?”
“Money,” Shelby said.
“I see,” Jules said.
“Want me to explain?”
“I don’t want you to explain on the telephone,” Jules said. “I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“At my office.”
“Be there at one,” Shelby said.
“I simply can’t,” Jules said. “I can be there by five-thirty. That’s the best I can do.”
“Okay,” Shelby said. “Five-thirty.”
“Will Durazo be with you?” Jules asked.
“He had an accident in T.J.,” Shelby said. “He ain’t never gonna be with me again.”
When Jules hung up, he was paralyzed with rage. His heart was pounding. His mouth was very dry but at least his hands didn’t shake. He was pleased that his hands didn’t shake. He’d always been able to control stress to a remarkable degree, hadn’t he? He was pleased that his mind had worked so quickly under fire. He’d told that pig to meet him at five-thirty because he knew instinctively that he’d be better off after dark. Whatever happened, it should happen after dark.
Jules hadn’t clearly formulated a plan yet, but Shelby Pate was forcing him. He wasn’t exactly making it up as he went along. He already had ideas, but they weren’t crystallized. Abel Durazo wasn’t coming back? That was great news. There was only Pate.
Jules looked at his watch. There was plenty of time to go to Green Earth and make preparations. Hazardous waste could be stored for a long time if he did it properly, and he certainly knew how to do that in order to sidestep government regulations. There was a stack of drums containing diesel fuel, and some containing etching acid that he’d been holding until he had a sufficient load. He’d put Shelby Pate into one of those drums.
Then it would be a matter of borrowing a boat from someone at the club. Maybe a runabout on a trailer. He could haul it to the yard and dolly the drum onto the boat; then he could launch the boat and dump the drum a mile offshore. He could do it as soon as Monday, or wait till the weekend. That might be best, doing it on the weekend. Then he could stay out and do some fishing just to prove something to himself: that Jules Temple did not panic. That Jules Temple was once again in control of his own destiny.
But he quickly dismissed that plan. The more mundane but less dangerous way would be to dump Pate’s body in the vicinity of a bikers’ bar like Hogs Wild, and let it be found. Let the police think he’d died as he’d lived, at the hands of some other lowlife scum.
CHAPTER 26
“It’s possible that I’ve been running away from my three sisters all my life,” Fin said to her.
He was sitting on the sofa eating his second bowl of butter brickle ice cream. His bachelor apartment, a block from the sand in south Mission Beach, had been thoroughly cleaned and tidied up by Fin on the chance that he’d be successful in persuading Nell to come home.
She was seated at the kitchen table finishing her second bowl.
“Why would you spend your life running away? Are they so awful?”
“Actually, all three’re smarter than me. And each managed to have a happy marriage to guys that weren’t millionaires or senile or comatose. The youngest one’s recently widowed and she got herself a good job, recession and all. They have nice kids and they’re successful in life. Me, I’m a failed actor, a failed cop, and the world’s worst marriage prospect.”
“So’re you saying you always marry women who aren’t like your sisters?”
“Actually, I came to that conclusion just after I met you.”
“Whaddaya mean by that?”
“You remind me of my sisters.”
“I thought they kicked ass and took names.”
“They did. It didn’t work, but they kept trying.”
“Did it ever occur to you that you waste a lotta time on self-pity?”
“That’s exactly what my sister says.”
“Which one?”
“All three.”
“Are you a junkie that can’t stop?”
“Probably,” he said, “unless I finally get involved with somebody who’s like my sisters.”
“I thought your first wife, the good sergeant, kicked your butt from time to time.”
“Yeah, but she did it for her own amusement. My sisters did it to make me a better person.”
Nell got up and went to the refrigerator for more ice cream. “The hell with calories,” she said.
“With that bod, you can afford a few calories.”
“Looks like I’m doing it again,” she said.
“What?”
“Getting involved with a Peter Pan policeman. Your favorite song is ‘Someone to Watch Over Me,’ right?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“A woman my age would kinda like it the other way around, even in these modern times.”
“Hillary Clinton wouldn’t think so. Who’re you voting for on Tuesday?”