Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

“All right, what has happened?” asked Tranquillini. “You go tearing off with this utterly charming young lady...”

“Hector Tranquillini. Corinne Jones.”

They shook hands above the table, awkwardly to keep coat sleeves out of the half-squeezed plastic tubes of mustard.

Kearny said, “Corinne came to tell me Bart is in Boston and that someone else is trying to tail him, to get at Verna through him. Someone picked up his trail through the messages he’s been leaving on the DKA answering machine in my office.”

“A phone tap?” asked Tranquillini, truly surprised.

Corinne did not mention the ugly phone call or her reaction to it. She was ashamed of both. “Bart thinks they picked him up yesterday morning, from the message he left on the machine about a topless dancer named Fleur who works at the Iberville Caberet.”

“Do you need me at the hearing this afternoon, Hec?” asked Kearny.

“To testify? No.”

“Okay, then I’m going to get hold of O’B and we’ll sweep the office for bugs. What I’m afraid of is a butterfly mike — that would have picked up not just phone conversations, but things like Benny Nicoletti telling me about his witness to the Fazzino hit.”

Giselle was lost. “But if Pivarski isn’t the hit man...”

“This guy saw somebody,” said Kearny bleakly. “He can identify the killer whoever it might be. Which means they still might want to try and hit him.”

“Are you going to call Nicoletti?” asked Tranquillini.

“Not until we’re sure.”

Tranquillini nodded and stood up. “I leave it to you. Time for me to get back to work. Thanks for a superb lunch.”

“Hell, I thought you were paying,” said Kearny.

Heslip had slept in his car yet again, this time in front of the address he had gotten from Zeb Rounds, 110 Allerton Street in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The houses were boxcarred down a San Francisco-steep hill, but the architecture was something completely new to him. Aged three-deck frame houses with an outside stairway to the upper floors on the front of the house and landings which were really porches on each floor. Looked like flats, one to a floor.

At 110, no answer on any floor. He went back down from the top flat and out to the narrow, slanted sidewalk. Roxbury was part of Boston, and Boston was damned cold this time of the morning in October, bright sunshine or not. Two houses down, a gray tiger-stripe cat was watching him. The door behind it opened and a black girl wearing an apron came out and picked it up. Her eyes met Heslip’s and he gestured at the house he had just quit. “Nobody home. Do you know—”

“Wasn’t no answer upstairs at Ethel’s place? Third floor? She’s Cliff’s sister.” Heslip had gotten Cliff Brown’s name from Zeb Rounds, to go with the address. One of the girl’s hands unconsciously stroked the old tom’s blunt, scarred head. “Ethel Brown. Gettin’ her welfare under that name, so that’s the name she keeps even though she’s got a live-in man. Probably went shopping, she’s got two boys in school.”

Half an hour later a slim black woman in a cloth coat came trudging up from the bus stop with a heavy supermarket bag of groceries. Heslip held them so she could get out her keys. “You must be Ethel,” he said with a big grin.

“That don’t tell me who you are.” She blew out a long breath. “Whew! The Good Samaritan, maybe?”

“I try to be.” He broadened his grin. “Johnny Mack said you’d be home, most mornings.”

Her Good-Samaritan look faded. “You a friend of Johnny’s?”

He took his cue from her voice. “I owe him a little money on the New England-Miami game, and that’s the truth. He was sayin’ how broke he was. I got some cash right now from Mother’s Day...”

Being when welfare checks arrived. Since she’d been shopping, it was a pretty safe bet yesterday had been the day. She reached, stiff-faced, for her groceries. “I don’t hold much with gambling.”

“Neither do I,” said Heslip with his ready grin, “not when I lose. Thing is, he said his woman was pregnant or some such...”

“That woman? That Vernal Listen, let me tell you about that piece of goods. Was months ago she was pregnant, and...”

Johnny Mack had shown up with the pregnant Verna several months before. He’d bunked downstairs with Cliff, Verna upstairs with Ethel and her family. At first.

“Wasn’t enough that girl was a whore, but then I started missing things, things you could pawn, y’know? And any money around the house.” She shook her head in remembered outrage. “That damn girl was a junkie! A junkie whore, he brings her into my house, where I’m raising my kids! I threw her out, don’t know where she went. Johnny Mack moved out of Cliff’s place, too — and I don’t know where he went, either. I know neither one of ’em will set foot in my house again.”

“Would Cliff know where Johnny Mack is? I really ought to pay him back this money...”

“Me and Cliff aren’t that close, mister.”

Tranquillini said, with the manner of a man who’s had a twenty-dollar lunch rather than a hot dog out of a cardboard boat, “Did Mr. Pivarski give you the letter, or did he give it to Miss Onoda?”

“He gave it to me. I read it and then gave it to her.”

“Did Miss Onoda make any comment upon reading it?”

“She asked me to call Mr... to call your office.”

“And you did.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what did you say the date was?”

“November fifth.”

“And you got no answer at my office, none at all. Did Mr. Pivarski have any comments while all this was going on?”

“He was not present. I’d left him by my desk...”

“Of course. And Mr. Pivarski then was invited back to the private office and Miss Onoda signed the bottom of this famous letter in his presence, and—”

“Objection to counsel’s use of the word ‘famous.’ ”

“Sustained.”

Tranquillini nodded acquiescence. “Sorry, Your Honor. Now, it was after this conversation, Mr. Simson, that the money was tendered and the letter signed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you knew of this letter from November fifth of last year until this very day, didn’t you, Mr. Simson? You have never forgotten Pivarski bringing that copy of the letter from his attorney, have you? Not for an instant.”

“I recall the letter,” said Simson stubbornly.

Tranquillini addressed the bench almost off-handedly.

“Respondent has previously placed before you as Exhibit A for Identification, an affidavit signed by Mr. Simson. I now would like that affidavit introduced into evidence.”

“Any objection?”

“Yes.”

The Hearing Officer hesitated. “I take it this is being offered for the purpose of impeachment, Mr. Tranquillini?”

“We object that it does not impeach the witness’s testimony,” said Delaney.

“That’s up to the Hearing Officer,” Tranquillini retorted.

“We will take a half-hour recess while I study this document. I will rule upon it at that time.”

DKA was not an agency that specialized in electronics, but being in the detective business they had a certain familiarity with bugs and their detection. As Kearny and O’Bannon moved about his private office, they carried a short-wave radio, very slowly taking the tuner across the spectrum of bands as they did.

“I’m telling you,” said O’B, “that the ’Niners have the best defensive front four in football right now.”

“Even if I give you that,” said Kearny, who lived in Raider territory, “they don’t have the offensive punch of the Raiders. I think...” With sudden clarity, his voice was also coming from the radio. “...that the Raiders are going to the Super Bowl again this year. I don’t think” — he switched off the radio — “... there is a team in pro football who can stop them.”