Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

“It’s complicated. Something Kathy worked on over in Oakland. That’s why you still have my caseload. And why” — he was grubbing in his attach case for a manila folder — “you’re going to have to take another one for me, too.”

“This have to do with the State trying to punch Dan’s ticket?”

“Yeah.”

“Gimme.”

Giselle, having read Ballard’s reports of the previous day’s investigations, had been busy with the cross-directories. She got on the radio. “KDM 366 Control calling SF-6. Come in, Larry.”

“This is SF-6. Over,” came Ballard’s voice.

“I have a res add on Simson for you from the new criss-cross. Just confirmed with Information. Jeffrey L. Simson, 1950 El Camino Real, San Bruno. Over.”

“Ten-four,” said Ballard. “I’ll hit it on my way back in. I’m down by the Cow Palace now en route to Brisbane to talk with Mary McCarthy.”

A few years before it had been a grassy, deserted fold in the hills a mile short of the tough old village of Brisbane nestled up against the base of the San Bruno Mountains. Then an industrial park had been staked out, and over the years had been filled up by industry fleeing San Francisco’s rising crime and tax rates.

Ballard turned in off old Bayshore Boulevard and went down the rows of anonymously modem glass-and-synthetic buildings along Valley Drive until he found Royal Foods. It was indeed the scorcher he had predicted, so his shirt was sticking to his back as he got out of his car.

A uniformed security guard was waiting at a table inside the double glass doors. “ ’Nye help ya?”

“Mary McCarthy, please.”

“Which department?”

Ballard took a guess. “Credit.”

It was down the hall, third door on the left; there were only three people in the room and only one of them a woman.

“Ms. McCarthy?”

She was about Ballard’s age and wore a plain gold wedding band on her right hand. She had premature crow’s-feet around her quizzical, pale eyes, and brown hair cut in a soft bob; in truth, a somewhat pudgier woman of body than her thin face would suggest. Ballard gave her his name and whom he was looking for.

“Donna’s not in any trouble, is she?”

Ballard chuckled to show how little trouble Donna Payne was in. “We just need a statement from her about an insurance matter.”

After listening to his scam, Mary McCarthy reached under the desk for her purse. “I’ve been meaning to get in touch with her, but one thing and another...” Like the landlady and her for rent sign the previous day, Ballard thought, except this one wasn’t a boozer. She was thumbing through a small black address book. “Yes. It is 573 Ashley Avenue in San Carlos.”

Except that when Ballard called Information from a pay phone near the security guard’s table, he was told there was no listing for Donna Payne in San Carlos. Or anywhere else on the Peninsula south of the city. Another dead end? Getting into the Cutlass, he remembered he had not asked Mary McCarthy about the Nevada lead the boozing landlady had given him. Must be getting old.

His ma had named him Samuel after some dude in the Bible, and always insisted on the full name. Samuel Rounds. Showed respect, she said, because the original Samuel had been a prophet of the Lord’s. But out of the house he liked Sammy. He was only fourteen, but looked seventeen easy. The counterman at Fisher’s Ribs and Chicken, on Friday nights sometimes he’d let Sammy watch the crap game in the storeroom. He wouldn’t do that with no little kid, because that was one high-stakes game.

Sammy pulled back the plunger, delicately released it. The ball shot forward. Arced around. Began to bounce from bumper to bumper, clanging and lighting them up and clicking up points.

“You’re pretty good at that, blood.” The man was very black and very wide-shouldered, with cool eyes and a hard face, and under his short-sleeved flowering aloha shirt, forearms which were ridged with muscle.

“Bes dere is,” said Sammy, expanding under his attention.

“You must be Sammy Rounds.”

Sammy was instantly guarded. “Where you hear ’bout me?”

The stranger lifted a shoulder fractionally, and an eyebrow fractionally. He was bad, Sammy could see that. Bad clear through.

“I’m a’ old friend of your sister Verna’s.”

Sammy was now downright suspicious. “You jivin’ me, man?”

The stranger shook a couple of cigarettes from his pack, offered one to Sammy. “Been away,” he said.

Sammy returned to his game so he could lay the cigarette on the edge of the pinball machine once it was lighted. He didn’t want to start coughing in front of the stranger.

“Whut you want with Verna?”

“Now whut you suppose I want with a foxy lady like that?”

Then the stranger bought a pint of sneaky pete and he and Sammy went to sit in his short and drink it and jive a little.

Nineteen-fifty El Camino Real in San Bruno turned out to be the Cable Car Motel. A motel ? Ballard parked in front of the office and went in. A bell jangled when he opened the door. He could hear a TV in the apartment behind the office. A mid-fifties man with a springy stride and ill-fitting dentures and old-fashioned suspenders came out. The dentures made his smile sharklike.

“Does a Jeff Simson live here?” asked Ballard.

“Certainly.”

Weird old duck. “Which unit?”

“Here. This one.”

“He’s the manager?” The phone listing suddenly made sense. The old guy was still looking at Ballard expectantly, as if waiting for him to dance a jig or throw a fit or walk a tightrope. “May I speak with him, please?”

“You are.”

Oh no, including the middle initial? “Jeffrey L. Simson?” demanded Ballard, just to be sure.

“Oh.” The old man chuckled wisely. He had the breath to go with the dentures.

“This has happened before?”

“Last week, was a policeman with a warrant for unpaid parking tickets. A month ago, some feller from the State of California.”

“What did he want?” asked Ballard quickly.

Too quickly. The wrong Jeffrey L. Simson drew himself up and clicked his porcelain teeth over a curt good day. Almost, Ballard thought as he drove away, as if the feller from the State of California had elicited his patriotism about keeping quiet concerning the State’s interest in the other Jeffrey L. Simson.

Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Unless...

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said Kearny, as he hung up the phone. “Unless...”

Giselle hung up the extension. Kearny began pacing the postage stamp of space behind his desk, carrying the cup of hot coffee she had just brought down from upstairs. Ballard’s call had caught them still at the office even though it was long past closing time.

“... unless they were checking whether they had a case before they made their move. Which means they need somebody to back up Pivarski’s version of what went on that day between him and Kathy.”

“That would be perjury, Dan.”

“By both Pivarski and our man, yeah.” He added absently, “Or woman. And maybe Pivarski’s attorney as well. Franks.” He quit pacing. “Leave Ballard a note to find out whether the state investigator talked with Donna Payne, too. Tomorrow, stop at the Oakland office on your way in. Ask Irene Jordon if anyone was around bothering her. We want to find out if they were trying to reach anyone except Simson.”

Giselle was writing. “You aren’t coming in tomorrow?”

“After I talk with old man Hawkley. You take a cab to the Oakland office, I’ll pick you up there.” Giselle didn’t drive. “If this is a deliberate move by someone to jerk my ticket, Hawkley’s going to be in it somewhere.”