Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

No hand-holding or meaty thigh-massaging before, during, or after the steaks. Greenly was about as romantic as a doctor treating a virus. And it was short of nine-o’clock when Ballard front-tailed them back up onto the freeway for the run back into Sacramento proper. Still, it was something. And it got better.

Because Greenly stayed on Interstate 80 to where it swung north and cut through the California Exposition grounds, where the state fair was held each year, Ballard was behind him again by the time he took the Arden Way exit to Howe Avenue and, a few blocks north, a modem apartment building two stories high and half a block long, shaped like a motel. The green Toyota went into stall 23 and Greenly and the girl went upstairs.

Ballard was standing in front, in the driveway, when lights went on in a second-floor apartment. He went up and checked the door — Apartment 23 — and then down to check mailboxes. Madeline Westfield.

Who held Greenly there for under two hours. The tailjob back to Bartley Drive put Greenly into bed yet again before midnight. And, Ballard was sure, to sleep. He would have spent his sexual energy on Madeline. For the wife, the tale of a late-night budget session or the weekly poker game with the boys. For Ballard, back at his motel, a message to call Dan Kearny at 8 A.M. at a number Ballard didn’t recognize. Left for him two hours earlier.

Which meant that about the time Ballard had watched Madeline Westfield’s bedroom lights go out, Kearny had been ringing Benny Nicoletti’s doorbell. It was an old dark Victorian on Elizabeth Street below Diamond Heights. Kearny had never been there before. There were fancy frosted glass panels on either side of the door with Nicoletti’s initials on them. A plain-faced woman answered.

“Come in, Mr. Kearny.” She shook hands firmly. “We’ve talked on the phone enough times so I feel I know you. Benny’s down in his shop.”

Kearny stopped at the bottom of the stairs in surprise. There was a full woodworking shop — lathe, drill press, circle and band and jig saws, an electric planer, lots of hand tools.

“When the cops retire me, I’ll be a cabinetmaker,” said Nicoletti. His heavy body was draped in a brown smock and his forearms were speckled with wood shavings. “I’m trying to turn four exactly similar table legs, and if you don’t think that’s a bitch...”

Kearny looked around for an ashtray.

“Use that coffee can for your butts. What couldn’t keep until morning?” There was only curiosity, not rebuke, in his voice.

“My office is bugged,” said Kearny.

“Bugged?” Nicoletti, who had just sat down on the edge of the tool bench, bounced to his feet. “You ain’t suggesting I—”

“The equipment is too good for you boys.”

Benny was pacing the pathway of uncluttered concrete between the various power tools by the time Kearny stopped talking. He was even smoking one of Kearny’s cigarettes. “So they know who our witness is, and they know we’ve brought him down from Canada. They know he’s pointed a finger at Pivarski’s DMV photo, but that don’t matter because he might be able to I.D. the actual killer if he ever saw him face to face. So my bet is they want him, and want him bad, just for insurance.”

Kearny stubbed his third cigarette. “Anyway, I told you about it.” He stood up and yawned. “I hope your operation is as leakproof as you think it is.”

“Me and two other guys know where he is, that’s all.” He was pacing again, thinking aloud. “What say we use the bug to feed ’em false information? You game?”

“False information such as what?”

Twenty minutes later Kearny left, to Mrs. Nicoletti’s profuse apologies for not getting the chance to pour some coffee down him. From a gas station he called Ballard’s Sacramento motel and left a message that he wanted to be called at 8 A.M. The number he left was that of a suburban pay phone a quarter of a mile from his house in the East Bay town of Lafayette. He doubted that even Hawkley’s busy little legions had started bugging pay phones at random.

Heslip had fallen asleep in his rented Pinto outside 428 Madison Street, the address he had coerced out of the terrified Clifford Brown. He hadn’t wanted to fall asleep, but here it was the wee hours of Friday morning and his head hadn’t hit a pillow since those few hours in Fleur Lisette’s bed some forty-eight hours back.

Not that he would miss anything. Willie Brown wasn’t about to be home during the hours from dusk to dawn, if then: the neighbors had confirmed what Ethel’s husband had suggested with his remark about pimps and drug pushers. Johnny Mack would be the pimp in question; Willie, the drug pusher. Johnny Mack was intermittently there — the same could be said of Willie — but Verna wasn’t. And no baby had been seen.

He could have gone looking, but he didn’t know this town. Didn’t have a photo of Verna, not even a good description of Johnny Mack. This address was all he had, so he had to make this address work for him. Couldn’t even call DKA, find out how the hearings were going. Couldn’t call Corinne except at work, if there...

And he fell asleep, even freezing his butt off because he couldn’t chance a telltale exhaust that would alert careful dope dealer eyes. People who dealt in dope had careful eyes, or they passed quickly from the street scene to prison, or to the morgue, or into the sad hollow dreams they sold to the unwary.

When the phone rang at seven o’clock on Friday morning, Corinne Jones was sitting on the edge of her bed and marveling at what a good night’s sleep she’d had once she knew Bart hadn’t been fooling around with that topless bitch back in New Orleans. But the phone started it up again. Who called you at seven in the morning? The breather with another serving of filth? Or maybe just Toni to ask if she could open the office again.

“Ah... is this here... um... Corinne Jones?”

Unknown voice. Female. Southern Black.

“Yes. Speaking.”

“Your... um... Mr. Heslip gave me this number, said I could reach you evenings...”

“This is morning,” snapped Corinne. If Bart had given that topless bitch her unlisted home phone number...

“This here is an emergency...” The voice paused breathily but it was the breathlessness of extra poundage, not of menace. “Thing is, I done hear from my husband after all these years, an’...”

Damn the woman! But at least, with a husband, it wasn’t about to be that topless bitch.

“You’ll have to tell me who your husband is — and who you are.”

“Oh! Emmalina Rounds. It’s my little girl that—”

“Mrs. Rounds! Yes! Bart said... oh, and you’ve heard from your husband in New Orleans?”

“Uh... I guess ex-husband, cause he’s done remarried a long time ago. Thing is, four men come to see him an’ wanted Verna’s address. He wouldn’t give it to ’em, so they started to beat on him. He was callin me from the hospital, had some busted ribs an’ all, but he knocked one of ’em out so the police, they got him. An’ he didn’t tell ’em nothin bout where my Verna is at.”

“That’s wonderful, Mrs. Rounds.”

“Thing is, he wanted to get word to Mr. Heslip that there was men after my Verna. He had it wrong about Mr. Heslip, thought he was fum some gover’mint agency...”

They talked a little longer and hung up. Corinne sat, phone in hand, trying to think of what to do. She had no idea of how to reach Bart. He already knew other men were after Verna, but he didn’t know they were going for violence. What frightened her was that her Bart was the kind who would get in their way rather than let them do anything to the little former file clerk.