Dead Man (12 page)

“I want to talk about you and your friend with the long black hair entertaining at Teddy Maxton’s Christmas party.”

Cindy dumbed down her face and put a whine in her voice.

“Was just a gig, man. Dude paid us a century each to do the same show we do at the club—”

“The long-haired one who took off with Jimmy Zimmer.”

“Look, man, I don’t know nothing about it. Even if I did know something about it I wouldn’t know nothing about it.”

Dain said, conversationally, “If they catch them, Cindy, they’ll snuff her. Right along with him.”

“Snuff?” she cried in alarm, her black eyes shocked in her strong-boned brown face. “What you talk snuff? Vangie—”

“If I get to them first, I can give her a break.”

She grabbed Dain’s arms and started trying to shake him. It was like trying to shake an oak tree.

“What you talkin’ ‘bout?
Who
you talkin’ about?”

“Maxton. His friends.”

She let go of his arms. A slow shudder went through her. She stared at the sidewalk. Dain gently took her arm and urged her
along. The streetlights were on automatic, blinking yellow caution in four directions at each intersection.
Somewhere far to the south a siren rose and fell, rose and fell.

“Straight she went off with Jimmy Zimmer? Mr. Creepo?”

“Straight. And they took—”

“I don’t wanna hear it.” She hugged herself as they walked, as if suddenly cold. “I don’t wanna be havin’ this conversation.”

They crossed on a crosswalk; there was no traffic.

“Vangie who? From where?”

She didn’t say anything for a quarter of a block, finally said in a rush, “Vangie Broussard. From I-don’t-know-where. Never
talked about ‘did’—only about ‘gonna.’” She gave her sudden deep laugh again, her fears for a moment forgotten. “That girl
had the biggest collection of gonnas I ever heard.”

“Gonna what?”

“Gonna make a big score. Gonna get took care of
right
by Maxton. But that Christmas party…”

She fell silent. Dain prompted, “What happened?”

“Maxton wanted her to take some important client into the private office during the party and fuck his brains out.” She looked
over at him, burst out, “She was in love with the dude, man, he say he love her, an’ he ask her to do that! Was a couple weeks
after that she started hittin’ on Jimmy Zimmer—he already had his tongue hangin’ out down to his shoetops…”

They walked. Dain said, “Anything else you can tell me?”

“We roomed together, but she was a loner, didn’t do a whole lot with the other kids. I came home one afternoon, must be like
two weeks ago now, she was gone. The place spotless, a month’s rent for her
and
me on my pillow, but not even a note…” She looked over at him, said suddenly, “We partied a couple times with Zimmer and
his buddy, I never saw nuthin’ in either one of “em, but Vangie asked me.”

“Tell me about the buddy.”

“Bobby Farnsworth of Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth. Mr. Cube.” Her sudden urchin grin shaved ten
years off her age. “Boooo-o-o-ring. I’m not really into IRAs and all that jazz, but like to him,
The Wall Street Journal
is
Rolling Stone.”

“Stocks and bonds?”

“Chicago Board of Trade all the way, baby.” She stopped in front of a run-down brick apartment building. “You walked me home
after all. It’s six floors straight up unless they fixed the elevator, but if you want a cup of coffee and ain’t afraid of
heights—”

“You don’t want to know me, Cindy,” said Dain. “I’m bad news. Even my cat won’t purr.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and leaned forward and up to kiss him on the cheek.

“Goodbye, Mr. Sad Man,” she said.

Before starting through the newspaper, Dain called Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth. The receptionist sounded bored enough
to be doing her nails behind the switchboard. He told her, “I’d like to make an appointment with Mr. Farnsworth to discuss
setting up a rather substantial investment account.”

“Mr. Farnsworth Senior or Junior?”

“Junior.”

“Mr. Farnsworth Junior is in our San Francisco office for three months’ training. If anyone else—”

“No. But his San Francisco home phone number might help.”

He wrote it down, hung up. San Francisco. Could Zimmer and the woman, Broussard, also be in San Francisco? No. They would
be hiding in Broussard’s life, not Zimmer’s. But a good coincidence for Dain just the same. When the time came, Farnsworth
would be Zimmer’s best bet for moving the bonds.

But first, Broussard. Cracking the Chicago police computer with his laptop would take longer than direct action, so he quickly
scanned the morning newspaper, finally stopping at an item on the local news page.

When he got off-shift this morning at 4:00 a.m., plainclothes detective Seth “Andy” Anderson of Central Station made the mistake
of stopping off at a coffee…

Dain’s ballpoint pen underlined
Seth “Andy” Anderson
and
Central Station,
then hand-scrawled a letter on a sheet of hotel stationery cut in half so it was memo size. Dain used the half without the
letterhead, dating it five days earlier.

Andy:

I don’t want to go through channels on this one, since it’s about Vangie Broussard, that black-haired “exotic dancer” I been
humping since she left Chicago. I think she was involved in a 187PC out here a couple nights ago, and if she was, I wanta
bust it myself. I’ll be in Chi on the 14th, can you pull her package to give me a look when 1 get there? Thanks, pal.

He scrawled
Solly
below the note as a signature, then added a handwritten postscript:

P.S. I need a sweetener in the Department since you-know-what.

Dain addressed an envelope to Andy Anderson at Central Police Station, Chicago, then paused to run a mental check. It was
okay. Randy Solomon wasn’t due back from vacation for two more days, so he put Solomon’s SFPD return address in the upper
left corner, stamped it, set the date on a self-inking rubber stamp for five days previously, and canceled the stamp.

Finally, he put in the letter, sealed it, opened it again
raggedly with his finger under the flap. He stuck the letter and an SFPD lieutenant’s shield in a leather carrying case into
the side pocket of the cheap, rather shabby suitcoat he had bought at the Salvation Army, and left the hotel.

Chicago’s Central Police Station was old, ill-kept, angry-looking, as if it never got enough sleep and took a lot of Turns.
At a booking desk from the days when Al Capone ran the city, Dain flashed his SFPD shield. In his off-the-rack suit and unshined
shoes, an old-fashioned fedora mashed down on his head and an unlit cigar screwed into one corner of his mouth, he looked
like fifteen years on the force.

“Yeah, welcome to Chicago,” said the booking sergeant. “How are things out there in fruit and nut land?”

“That’s L.A. We’re the cool gray city by the bay.”

“Yeah, Herb Caen. What can we do for you, Lieutenant?”

“Anybody awake in Vice at this hour?”

“Prob’ly ain’t gone home yet.” The sergeant grinned and handed him a visitor’s badge that he clipped to the breast pocket
of his suitcoat. “Elevator to the third floor, turn left.”

Dain thanked him and rode the elevator up, not to Vice, but to the Detective Squadroom. Various plainclothesmen were at the
battered desks, typing reports, interviewing complainants, witnesses, suspects. Off in a corner a black youth with dreadlocks
was being fingerprinted by a Hispanic woman in a crisp blue uniform. Smoke blued the room. Dain’s eyes found an empty desk
with a DET. ANDERSON name block on it.

Going down the room drew Dain no more than a casual brush of eyes from the busy cops. He hooked a hip over the corner of the
desk, in the same movement slipped his letter, envelope clipped to the back, underneath the top folder in Anderson’s In box.
He then leaned toward the man typing at the next desk. His nameplate read DET. KALER.

“Hey, pal.”

The cop kept on typing. Unlike the stereotype, he was
good at it. Dain leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder. Kaler swung toward him, angry, pale eyes flashing.

“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?”