Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) (3 page)

“I believe it, Sonny,” I told him, “but no thanks. I’m loaded with money, no matter what Seymour tells you. Now, I’ve got to go. I’m giving you back to Seymour.” I handed the still-talking receiver to a sorrowful Seymour and turned my attention to the Bible student, who was standing at the bay window looking out past
Coit Tower at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge sticking out of the haze. I joined him.

“What do you think?”

“It looks just fine to me, Mr. Goodey,” he said. “Here’s the contract my uncle drew up. I hope everything is satisfactory.”

He handed me a long sheet of accounting paper half covered with tiny writing. I skimmed it quickly. I knew that if
Lum Kee wanted to hide some joker clauses I’d never find them anyway. It all seemed fairly straightforward.

“It looks okay,” I said, “but I don’t really like the idea of leaving my apartment to anybody.” I peered clo
sely at Fong, bringing out myI’m-a-keen-copper-so-don’t-try-to-bullshit-me look. “I only hope you’re nowhere near as big a crook as Lum Kee. I couldn’t stand it.”

“I’m not,” he said, apparently neither knocked over by my look nor offended. “One of the things my mother asked me to do while I am here is to try to put my uncle’s feet back on the path of right
eousness.”

“You’ve got a big job,” I told him. “I don’t think
Lum’s feet were ever within taxi distance of it. But I’m wasting time. The place is yours for six months—no more. If you or your uncle double-cross me, I’ll come back and get you both. I’m a hard man. Ask Mayor Kolchik.” Having failed to impress Fong, I turned to Chub, who was just hanging up the telephone.

“Chub, come here and witness this legal document.”

We all three signed the contract, and Fong left, agreeing to pick up the key to my apartment at his uncle’s store. I jumped back into the bedroom and locked my packed cases. Bringing them out into the living room, I put the cases down by the door and turned to Seymour. “Well, Chub—” I held out my hand.

His jaw dropped. On that round face the fall couldn’t have been fatal.

“You’re not going to try to lose me, are you, Joe,” he asked. “Mr. Berkowitz’s instructions are to stick with you wherever you go. It’s my job. Besides, he’s authorized me to lend you any reasonable amount if you need it. That might come in handy, Joe. Think about it.”

I thought for five seconds. “All right, but I’m not waiting for you a single minute. Your hotel is not far from my bank. I’ve got to draw some money, and if you’re there in exactly thirty minutes, you can come with me. It’ll save Sonny the cost of renting a car.”

“You promise, Joe?”

“I promise.” I tried to look sincere and probably succeeded only in looking sinister.

“All right then,” he said still a bit doubtfully, “I’ll get going. I'll meet you on the comer of Market and Montgomery, right in front of the Bank of America.”

“Okay, Chub, but don’t be late or you’ll get left. I’m supposed to be out of this town by two o’clock.”

Kroll left wearing an expression torn between hopeful trust and wistful misgiving, and I took a last look around.

Feeling like a vagrant, I picked up my bags, went out into the hall, kicking the door shut behind me, and started down the steep stairs. On the street I threw the cases into the back of the Morris— triumphantly
unticketed—and walked into Lum Kee’s.

“He’s out,” said the skinny girl behind the counter coldly.

“I don’t care,” I said to show that I didn’t. I separated the door key from my malnourished key ring and dropped it into the girl’s uneager hand.

“Give this extremely valuable key to
Lum Kee,” I said, “and tell him that if he crosses me I’ll cut his heart out and make him eat it.”

This didn’t get a rise out of her either, but she took the key.

I climbed into the battered convertible and made an illegal turn. In less than a minute, I was on Broadway heading west, almost directly away from the comer of Market and Montgomery.

“Sorry, Chub, old buddy,” I murmured hypocritically as the car entered the Broadway tunnel.

4

The houses flanking Broadway were pale, cool, and slightly aloof, with just enough patchy color to ward off anonymity. At Van Ness Avenue I snaked across onto Lombard as if I were going to head north on Route 101 into Marin County. That’s what we police call misleading and evasive tactics. After a few blocks I pulled into a Shell station.

“Fill it up and check everything,” I told a teenaged desperado who slunk out to the pumps, jamming a rolled-up underground newspaper into his hip pocket. At a telephone booth near the sidewalk, I put a dime in the slot and dialed a number in Sausalito. Three rings later, a high-pitched voice said, “Hello?”

“Hello, Ramsey,” I said. ‘This is Joe. Let me speak to your mother.”

“Hi, Joe, when are you coming to see us?”

“Soon,” I lied, looking at my watch. It was twenty after one. “Is your mother there?”

“Gee, Joe—” I could hear a slight scuffle on the other end of the line, and Rachel Schute’s husky voice came on. “Hello, Joe,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes,” I said flatly, unwilling to start meaningless explanations. “Look, Rachel, I haven’t got much time. I called mostly to say that
a bit of a situation has come up, and I’ve got to go away for a while. Last night—”

“I heard,” she said. “How’s the old man?”

“Okay, I think. Last report from the hospital said he wasn’t particularly cheerful but would pull through. I’m not so sure Cousin Sanford will. How did you hear? The Chronicle? Thatcher?”

“Neither. People have been calling all day.”

“Yeah, and I can imagine who they were, too. But I haven’t much time. I’m just on my way out of town.”

“I thought you’d be just on your way to jail if I know
Kolchik at all.” She sounded really concerned. And I felt even more guilty.

“
Naw,” I said, “Lehman claims he can work a deal for me. I handed in my badge and agreed to disappear for six months while Kolchik cools off and gets himself re-elected.”

“Six months is a long time, Joe,” she said in that grave, even voice I knew so well. “Where do you plan to go?”

“No plans at all,” I admitted. “But Mexico looks like a strong contender.”

“Why Mexico?”

“Why not Mexico?”

“Are you going alone?” There was no complaint, no plea in her voice, but the words were heavy with what I knew they left unsaid.

“Yes,” I said shortly. How do you stretch out a one-word answer? But I added: “As soon as I know where I’m going to be, I’ll let you know. I’ll send you an address.”

“You do that, Joe,” she said. “I’ll be glad to hear. We all will. Thanks for calling. But, Joe, one thing—”

“Yeah?” I said wearily, expecting the worst.

“Don’t try to go too far today. You sound like you’re going to sleep on your feet. You’re tripping over your words.”

“You’re right,” I said, feeling the fuzziness heavy upon me again. “I won’t. Take care, Rachel, and give my love to the boys.”

“I will,” she said and hung up the telephone.

The pump jockey was waiting impatiently. Two cars were lined up behind the Morris.

“That’ll be a buck ninety-five,” he said, holding out a small hand.

“Did you check the battery water?”

“I forgot,” said the attendant. “That’ll be a buck ninety-five.”

“Do it now,” I said, wondering why I was wasting valuable time.

“Look—” the boy said, turning his eyes toward the line-up of cus
tomers.

“The line will only get longer,” I said like a kindly uncle.

Mouthing a nice, if limited, line of curses, the boy threw himself toward the station office, came lurching back with the distilled water bottle, and wrenched up the hood of my Morris. His enraged fingers twisted off the battery caps and spilled half the water on the concrete. He put the caps on, slammed the hood down, and turned back to me.

“That okay?” he said savagely.

“Just fine,” I said approvingly, handing him two dollars.

The boy didn’t even see the money. He was concentrating on me, willing me to disappear.

“My change,” I said. “Five cents. Or make it a nickel.”

The attendant clawed into his tight pocket and came up with a handful of keys and small change which he thrust toward my face like a knockout punch. I looked it over, took a nickel and climbed back into my car. You’re a bastard,
Goodey, I told myself.

Continuing west on Lombard, I ignored the turn north to the Golden Gate Bridge and went on through the Presidio, heading for the beach and the road south. I was thinking about Rachel
Schute.

She was the closest thing I’d had to a steady woman since Pat had left. But not that steady. Rachel was a remarkable woman—pretty in a delicate-skinned, red-haired, high-strung way, intelligent, affec
tionate, and easy to be with. Her three boys liked me as much as she obviously did. For me, Rachel had only two drawbacks, but they were big ones. She was forty-four years old and a millionairess several times over. Not that I have anything against money. Though there’s something about rich women—even Rachel—that makes me nervous. But the biggest problem for me was her age. I couldn’t see any way around that. I’m the kind of stupid jerk who likes them young and firm—like Pat—and moldable. In a slightly drunken moment Rachel had once said that real women scared me. Maybe she was right.

Soon I was rounding
Sutro Heights and heading down the familiar road running along Ocean Beach. On the left, Playland lay sprawled like a gypsy camp. The orange and yellow canvas had a desolate gaiety. The sea was calm, with just a scattering of whitecaps. I’d walked this beat for over a year when I was a rookie. I could still feel the biting cold and hear the ragged music from the old merry-go-round at Playland.

Continuing south, hugging the coastline, I pushed the old Morris past Lake Merced until I came to the familiar San Francisco City Limits sign. I looked at my watch. It was ten of two. Ten minutes’ grace. I had made it. But I felt fatigue hit me like a sandbag behind the left ear. My eyes closed involuntarily, and it seemed to take ages to wrench one of them open and stay on the road. I knew I had to sleep.

A little farther along I caught a sign on the right side of the road: Seavue Lodge—Vacancy. Driving over a grass-cracked sidewalk, I pulled the car up slightly askew against a whitewashed timber railing and let the engine die of its own accord. With great effort, I reached up and switched off the ignition, but my hand fell back before I could pinch enough to remove the key. Moving as I imagine zombies—tired zombies—do, I eased myself out of the car and pushed toward a screen door at the front of a big old house with a pink stucco addition tacked on at the side.

“A room,” I said to a pleasant-faced old body with gray hair sit
ting behind a short desk, knitting something orange. I could read her mind as she sniffed at me and then decided I wasn’t drunk. She opened a faded black registration book on the desk.

“Is seven dollars okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said with effort. I scrawled something in the book and held out my hand. “The key.”

She reached up to a peg board behind her, took down a large brass key with a wooden tag marked “8,” and handed it to me. I nearly dropped it.

“Luggage?” she said.

“In the car,” I managed to squeeze out. “Later.” I stood in front of the counter, knowing that there was something I wanted to ask but unable to think what it was.

“Through that side door,” the woman said, pointing, “and turn right. It’s the third door on the left.”

I cleverly followed her instructions and found myself facing a door carrying the number “8” painted in shiny black. With profound relief I saw that the door was open a crack and pushed through it. I scarcely saw a big, sagging iron bed covered with what looked like cotton candy before I hit it with all my weight.

5

It was broad, broad daylight again when I woke up with a
faceful of fuzzy bed cover. I rolled over on my back on the swaybacked bed and saw Ralph Lehman sitting in a chair in front of the window, looking at me with the eyes of a 225-pound Jesus Christ. One of his big feet was resting on one of my suitcases.

I closed my eyes again, hoping that he’d go away. But he remained—fat, tired, getting old, but still there. A glance down told me I was still fully clothed, but some kind soul had removed my shoes. I knew I’d been asleep for a long time because I felt queerly rested and very hungry.

“What day is it?” I asked, once I could get a little saliva flowing again. Someone had been blotting up mud with my tongue. “Friday,” Ralph said. “One o’clock. Joe—”

“Don’t Joe me, you son of a bitch.”

“Joe,” he said.

“You lying bastard. You promised. Just leave town, Joe, you said, give up a brilliant police career and disappear, and everything will be all right. I’ll fix it. I’ll dazzle Sanford and The Brother with my faultless footwork, and there’ll be no sweat. That’s what you said. You, Chief of Detectives Ralph C. Lehman, said that. Tired as I was, I heard you. And now this, you prick.”

“Joe,” he said, “are you finished?”

“No, but I’m taking a breather. What do you have to say?”

“You promise you’ll listen? Really listen?”

“I’ll listen, but I don’t promise to like it.”

“You’ll like it,” he said. “Joe, I meant every word I said yesterday morning. And things went very smoothly. The mayor and his high- ranking brother weren’t very happy about your escaping alive, but I sweet-talked them. I told them how it was. And they bought it, Joe. They bought it.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“You said you’d listen. Now, shut up.”

“I’m shut up.”

“Okay. That was yesterday. But things have changed since then, Joe.”

I opened my mouth again, but Ralph pointed a thick finger to
ward it, so I shut up.

“Things have changed,” he said, “because at about three o’clock this morning Tina
D’Oro was found murdered in her apartment over The Jungle.”

I didn’t have to hide astonishment, because I didn’t feel any. Or any emotion other than a vague feeling you might get when you heard that a public landmark you didn’t feel much for had been pulled down. More of a feeling that I should feel something.

“And you think I did it, Ralph? You’re more senile than the boys in the squad room think. If you—”

“No, no, no,” Ralph said with the consummate weariness of a man whose last year before retirement looks as if it’s going to last forever. “I don’t think you did it. Now, just listen, for Christ’s sake.” He looked at his watch. “We haven’t got much time. Bruno
Kolchik expects us in his office by three o’clock.”

I let that pass. “Go on,” I said, sitting down on the bed.

“When Tina was found, she had been dead for close to twenty-four hours. At that time, we know where you were. You were busy shooting the mayor’s cousin. That’s a damned fine alibi. But it’s also beside the point. In plain, simple language Tina D’Oro’s diary was found in her apartment, and featured prominently in that diary was the name of a man we all know and love.”

“Ralph Lehman,” I said just for the hell of it.

“Sanford F. Kolchik,” Ralph said.

Then I was surprised, and I didn’t try to hide it. “Sandy
Kolchik, our revered mayor and maybe prospective governor, messing around with the queen of the go-go girls? You’re kidding. Even Sanford’s not that stupid.”

“I’m not. And he is. But fortunately, a young detective with a brilliant police career ahead of him stumbled on the diary and stashed it before the press arrived.”

“Which is a contravention of every law I can think of and could get that brilliant detective, you and Sanford many years if it comes out.”

“If it comes out,” Lehman agreed. “But in the meantime it’s got Johnny Maher promoted to detective sergeant, and—”

“Not the Johnny Maher who’s such an opportunistic and sucking-up little bastard?”

“The very same,” Lehman said. “But, more important, it gives you a little time, a very little time, to find out who killed Tina.”

“Me? Why do I want to do that?”

“Well, partly, as you may have heard, because
Kolchik would sort of like to be re-elected.”

I laughed, not a very nice laugh. “I wish him a whole lot of luck.”

“He’s wishing you the same. Because his future is very much tied in with yours. If you don’t come back to San Francisco and find out who killed Tina, he’s going to do all those things I promised you he’d do. Remember?”

“I remember,” I said, and I did. All too well. “But why me, Ralph? Yesterday morning
Kolchik didn’t seem to think I had much promise as a detective...as I remember.”

“He still doesn’t. He thinks you’re a fuck-up. But you’ve got two things going for you. You’re off the force, so you can operate in a private capacity. And you knew Tina. That makes you the man for the job.”

He was right on both counts. I certainly was off the police, and I knew Tina, if only casually. A couple of years before, I’d had to fill in for a couple of weeks on the North Beach squad, and somebody was shot to death at The Jungle, the nightclub she was supposed to own a hunk of. While I was brushing away the flies and waiting for the homicide bunch to take over, Tina came over and sat on a bar stool near me. She was in costume—that is, she had almost nothing on—but she’d thrown an old chenille bathrobe over her shoulders. She was sitting at the bar, sipping on a tall drink and peering at a paperback book through thick, horn-rimmed glasses that definitely were not part of her act. She looked up with a puzzled expression and, since no one else was very close, asked me a question.