The Octopus on My Head (12 page)

“Hey,” I protested lamely, “we all got our troubles. Ivy Pruitt, for example, is a disabled veteran.”

Sal ‘The King' Kramer closed his eyes and shook his head. “The taxes I pay,” he muttered, “and that fucking guy gets a check every month?”

“Plus,” I added, “he's a friend of mine.”

“And mine,” Lavinia put in.

“You a musician?” Kramer asked her.

“No,” Lavinia said. “But I love music and the people who make it.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” muttered Kramer.

“Hey,” I said, “She's catching on.”

The phone rang. Instead of taking it on the speaker, Kramer picked up the receiver. “Yeah?” He listened, looked at each of us, then said, “No. They just left.”

Lavinia and I exchanged glances.

“How the fuck should I know?” Sal barked. “No, I don't know the answer to that, either.” He sighed loudly. “Look, Garcia, Folsom Street is the only way out of my parking lot and it's one way going east. You want I should catch them for you, too? Get a move on. They can't be far. I was going to call you,” he said, exasperated. “They just went out the door, for chrissakes. You're welcome.” He slammed down the phone. “Fuckin' cops.”

“Cops?”

“You two kill that guy?” Sal said to the wall in front of him. “Stepnowski?”

I said, “Sure we did. Blew him away for a bad debt. Iced him. Anything for you, Sal. He had it coming.”

Sal spun the chair to face us. “Anything for the money, you mean. Did Ivy at least split the commission with you, I hope?”

Lavinia said, “He didn't have much choice.”

Sal was looking at me. “What's she talking about?”

“Ivy was locked up at the Hall of Justice all day yesterday,” I told him. “We tracked down Stepnowski and got the money back on his behalf. Ivy handed off the job for half the take specifically so he could get himself bailed out.”

“Ivy was in jail again?” Sal assumed a pained look. “How in the hell…? This ain't your racket, Curly.”

“You're telling me.”

Sal looked at Lavinia's breasts again, but addressed me: “This is what's in it for you?”

Lavinia shrugged ostentatiously. “It was the only way to come up with enough dough to spring Ivy.”

“What was he in for?”

“Paraphernalia,” I said.

“Chickenshit,” Sal snorted.

“That was the Oakland beef,” I specified. “The DA didn't want to pursue it. That sprung me and it should have sprung Ivy, but they trucked him over to San Francisco for some prior he'd run out on. Driving on an expired license, something simple like that.”

“Expired license,” Sal repeated acidly. “You a special friend of Ivy's?”

Lavinia stood straight and smoothed the front of her jacket over her breasts. “You might say that.”

“So why didn't you just bail him out? Loan him the money?”

“Why didn't you?” Lavinia countered.

Sal shrugged. “I'm a businessperson.”

“Same here,” Lavinia said.

“You'd never see it again,” I suggested.

“He knew better than to call me,” Sal said. He looked curiously at Lavinia. “So he called you.”

“Not for a loan, though.” She nodded. “He made me a proposition. It looked like easy money. I went straight to the address you gave Ivy, but Stepnowski had moved. I tried to get the landlord to tell me where Stepnowski was. No soap. The landlord all but told me that if I'd come inside and fuck him, he'd tell me where Stepnowski was. Right. And I was hatched out of an egg last week.”

“Really?” I said. “He didn't try to get me to do that.”

“Maybe the guy's got standards,” said Sal.

“Maybe a girl does, too,” Lavinia countered sharply. “Anyway, Ivy's next idea was to get Curly to run the brother-from-out-of-town routine. We had to redistribute the action but, hey, without Curly there was no action. Ivy knew Curly looked weird enough to pass for a musician and an enforcer, too, if he kept his mouth shut. And he knew Curly could use the money.”

“Pass?” I said.

“What an operator,” Sal said, “a fuckin' polymath.” He waggled a flattened hand. “Tentacles in two worlds.”

“Any fool can see the sensitive soul beneath this tattoo,” I suggested.

“A youthful disfigurement,” Sal declared acidly. “Like a war wound.”

“You're speaking from experience?”

“Fuck no.” He jerked the thumb of his cigar hand to indicate his own chest for a change. “I dodged the draft for my country. It was the sixties. You shoulda been there. But,” he cleared his throat and spit into the trash can, “you weren't.”

“Please note, Sal,” Lavinia interrupted, “that Curly got the job done? He conned Stepnowski's new address out of the landlord; we drove over there; we found Stepnowski dead.” Before I could stop her, she went on, “The money practically fell out of the guy's pocket, but Curly took care of that, too. Personally, I wouldn't have touched it.”

This elicited a long look from me: I didn't believe her.

“Give credit where credit's due,” she persisted, “You ever go through a dead man's pockets?”

“Not lately,” Sal said.

Him, I believed.

“Stepnowski had plenty of money on him. We took our bite—your bite, too—left the rest, and got out of there. End of story.”

“Left the rest?” Kramer appraised her with a look.

“There was another twelve hundred on the guy,” I said.

Sal looked back and forth between us. “Really?” he beamed. “That's true?”

“That's it,” I said. “That's the truth.”

“What about it, Sister?”

“It's the truth.”

“That's it, then,” Sal said loudly. “Let's get this over with.”

I looked around. “Who you talking to?”

With an air of distraction Sal picked up a pencil, inserted the eraser into one ear, and stared at nothing. I looked at Lavinia. She looked at me. We both looked at Sal. Stirring the pencil, Sal looked at Lavinia's breasts. The office door opened behind us. With a little fresh air came the sound of someone belaboring a ride cymbal.

“Who was that on the phone?” I asked as I turned around. A guy in a trench coat was closing the door. He wore a tie, knotted but loose. He had wavy, jet black hair and smooth, closely shaven cheeks. He was in his late thirties or early forties, almost as tall as I am and half again as heavy. He had tired eyes that didn't look like they were falling by the World of Sound to score a pair of xylophone mallets.

“Lieutenant Garcia,” the man said by way of answering my question. “Homicide.”

Chapter Twelve

T
HE
K
ING
,” I
FACED
S
AL, “MY ASS.
”

“Guy sticks up the store,” Sal grumbled half-heartedly, “it takes them all fuckin day to get here.”

“Murder isn't a cash register, Kramer,” Garcia replied. He jerked a thumb at the door behind him. “Beat it.”

Sal looked a little startled. This was his office, after all. But Garcia stepped aside and Sal lost no time in getting out. A uniformed cop posted in the hall closed the door. Garcia turned around and held up a pistol, its barrel impaled on a pencil.

“Yikes,” said Lavinia, “so you're the guy who smashed my back window and stole my roscoe out of the glove compartment?”

I cringed.

Garcia said quietly, “This isn't high school, Miss Hahn.”

“That's true,” Lavinia nodded. “Do you have a warrant?”

“Lavinia
….
”

Garcia forestalled me with a smile. “I do have a warrant,” he addressed her, “if you'd like to play that way.” He patted his breast pocket. “But if you so choose, you're going to lose. Perhaps you'll hear me out first?”

“Perhaps she will,” I insisted.

Lavinia had so much trouble with authority that she was perfectly capable of flying in the face of Garcia's winning hand, even if she went to jail for it. Jails, in fact, are full of such people. Much as a scientist would watch a frog's leg to which he's attached an electrode, Garcia watched Lavinia. I watched her, too. My fate was a little too wired into her decision for comfort.

But some stroke of reasonableness stayed her contrariety. “So,” she finally said, “talk.”

Garcia talked. “Through a miracle of technology we've established that a second pistol fired three rounds at the scene of the Stepnowski murder.” Garcia let the pistol turn around the shaft of the pencil like a slow noisemaker, whose ominous appearance made up entirely for its silence. “But that gun didn't fire the shot that killed him.” When the handle came around, we could see that the clip had been removed. Garcia looked past it at Lavinia. “Same caliber, different gun.”

“On cop shows on my television before I pawned it,” I interrupted, “ballistics tests took weeks.”

“It's probably been several years since you pawned it,” Garcia said, with only mild condescension.

I nodded. “Ten, fifteen, twenty.”

“Other than the march of progress,” he said, with no condescension whatsoever, “you haven't missed a thing.”

“What's so hot about this murder case?” Lavinia asked. Despite her reasonable decision of just a moment before, her voice had reclaimed its accustomed note of antagonism. “Don't you have important dead people to investigate?”

“Oh yes,” Garcia replied mildly. “But there are reasons to fast track this particular case.”

“What reasons?”

The gun began to turn again. “By the additional miracles of computerized record-keeping and gun control legislation, we have also established that the registered owner of a Lexus parked in the lot next to this very building has no gun permit. In fact, even if this handgun is registered, its serial numbers have been filed.”

Lavinia pursed her lips.

“So the pistol will remain in our custody until such time as it meets its ultimate fate as one of the many guests of honor at the annual Police Athletic League fundraiser, barbecue, and ordnance meltdown.”

It seemed to me that, while Garcia was letting Lavinia slide on at least two gun charges, he almost had to be aware of how she earned her living. “I sense a drift, here.”

“It took almost two hours to follow up on the tip that sent us to the De Haro warehouse,” Garcia said. “But a homeless guy who regularly sleeps on the roof of a building across the street from 112 De Haro gave us a first-rate description of you two, along with the license plate number of a Lexus registered to one Lavinia Hahn.” He shifted his eyes to me. “He mentioned a guitar case, too. We found one in the trunk of your Lexus.” He shot a cuff and checked his watch. “By now it's at the lab. Which reminds me.” He opened the door. “Lavoix.”

Officer Lavoix turned around. Even with most of her raven hair tucked up under her service cap, she proved to be one of the prettiest cops I'd ever seen. “Lieutenant?” she said.

“You got a Number 3?”

Officer Lavoix produced a briefcase out of which she retrieved a large padded envelope, into which Garcia dropped the pistol, followed by its clip. From a spiral pocket notebook he recited a case number, which Officer Lavoix copied onto the flap. “Run this down to Pickering,” Garcia told her. “Suggest that he check it against the De Haro rounds. Come back and get me.”

“Yessir.” The door closed again.

“If it hadn't been for that homeless guy, whose name is Jake Carter, you two would be in a world of trouble.”

Lavinia had a little more to hide than a mere unregistered gun; but I, for one, intended to play this frolic straight up the middle, because I had nothing to hide. I needed a murder rap or an accessory rap or any rap at all, let alone more face-time with cops and junkies, like Beethoven needed earplugs.

“I appreciate the consideration, Lieutenant,” I said politely. “So, given this homeless guy, what's your understanding of the shooting on De Haro Street?”

Garcia didn't exactly beam at this ass-kissing, but Lavinia, for once, kept her mouth shut. “Carter had just settled in to read a little Shakespeare by headlamp when he heard three shots. He didn't check it out right away and, in any case, Jake wouldn't want to stick his head up before he'd turned off his headlamp. Besides which he's street-wary. Other people's troubles are not necessarily his, and gunshots in the city aren't exactly uncommon.”

“Sad to relate,” Lavinia commented pointedly.

“Yeah, well.” Garcia thinned his lips a little. “Jake took the trouble to put down his book, turn out his headlamp, get out of his sleeping bag, and take a careful peek over the parapet wall.”

“And he saw–?”

“The street was deserted. The Lexus was there already, but it didn't attract his attention at first. He was just about to give up when the outside light at 112 blinked on and off.”

Lavinia could not restrain herself from commenting: “Son of a bitch.”

Garcia smiled without amusement.

I hurried it along. “So Jake settled in to wait.”

Garcia nodded. “Jake was just about to give up again when a woman came out of the metal door at 112 followed by a tall, bald, skinny guy.” Garcia paused before he added, “Jake described the woman as ‘skanky'.”

Lavinia gasped, then burst out with, “This insolent fuck, this dregs of society thinks just because he's looking up from the gutter he's got perspective?”

“What's the matter, Lavinia? You've been dressing skanky for years. It finally worked.”

“Fuck you, you shitbird guitarist.”

Garcia said tiredly, “They argued
….
”

Lavinia rounded on him. “About what?”

Garcia shrugged. “At that distance, Jake couldn't make it out. But after a little consultation the guy re-entered the building. The woman scuttled—”

“Scuttled?” Lavinia shrieked.

“We have it on tape,” Garcia pointed out mildly.

Lavinia hissed like a cat.

“—Scuttled along the loading dock and down the stairs at the corner, where she got into a recent-model Lexus parked westbound on Alameda Street, and took off. No more than a couple of minutes later, just as Jake was thinking it was time to go back to
Richard III
, the Lexus reappeared eastbound on 15th, made the corner onto De Haro, and stopped in front of the warehouse—northbound on the wrong side of the street—long enough for the bald guy to join her. Now the bald guy is carrying a guitar case. Interestingly, Carter observed that this case seemed too light to have an instrument in it. The bald guy hefted it wrong. He was careless with it. Carter's words.”

“Your Shakespeare scholar is pretty sharp,” I remarked.

“Nosy bastard,” Lavinia grumbled.

“We left the guitar behind,” I explained politely, “in case things got rough.”

“How rough is murder?”

Nobody answered that one.

“Jake is sharp,” Garcia agreed. “He doesn't seem to be a lush or a hophead or crazy, either. He's just homeless.”

“Probably used to be a CEO,” Lavinia suggested.

“He likes the freedom. Lucky for you. From his perch Jake could see the clock on the old Folger's tower at Brannan and Spear. It was twenty-five minutes to ten
P.M
.,” he added politely.

“Damn,” I said.

“More luck,” Garcia smiled. “Jake will make a good witness. Any defense lawyer would play him like a violin.”

“Oh shit, oh dear,” Lavinia said, “defense lawyers are expensive.”

“I couldn't agree more,” I said.

Garcia shrugged. “The ballistics test on Miss Hahn's pistol will about tear it for me,” he said, “if it comes up the way I think it will. We haven't nailed it yet, but Stepnowski's forensics should peg his death as approximately coincident with Curly's visit to the Oakland jail, yesterday afternoon, six to eight hours before we can place either of you on De Haro Street. So I guess,” he clasped his hands in front of him, “you two can go ahead and get married.”

That got a laugh from me.

“Don't make me puke,” Lavinia barked. “What kind of self-respecting girl lets herself get married to a guy with an octopus tattooed on his head?”

“Youthful indiscretion covers both categories.” I rubbed the flat of my hand over my pate. “Darling.”

“And a musician!” she noted spitefully. “Where's the white picket fence?”

“On the album cover.”

“Marriages have started on shakier feet,” Garcia said sententiously.

“But not on eight slimy ones,” Lavinia said.

“Arms,” I said. “They're arms.”

“With suction cups!”

“And a beak.”

“Disgusting.”

“The better to have and to hold.”

“Eew!”

Garcia said, “I'd like to disregard the various felonies and misdemeanors littering the landscape, in order to get to the nut of this case.”

“Some people have a hard time keeping their eye on the ball,” I said appreciatively.

“Some people,” Lavinia archly observed, “have a ball to keep an eye on.”

I nearly retorted that calling heroin retail a ball to keep an eye on was going a bit far, but I confined my reaction to a scowl. If Lavinia was determined to sass her way into a hat full of felonies by way of distracting the world from her complicity in a shootout in a liquor store, she was welcome to them.

“Ever heard of Narcotics Anonymous?” Garcia asked suddenly.

With the effrontery that comes only from someone convinced she's pulled the wool over the eyes of the entire world, but especially over her own, Lavinia drew herself up to her full height and declared, “Narcotics Anonymous is for people with drug problems.”

“Is it not,” Garcia said.

“Next question.” Lavinia set herself to brushing an invisible particle of lint off her sleeve.

Garcia, who in any case was obviously interested in something else altogether, shrugged. “Okay. I was about to say that I'm fairly satisfied with your version of the story, so far as it goes.”

“Are you the guy who needs to be satisfied?” I asked.

“There will be the DA, when the time comes. The disposition of witnesses and evidence will be his call. But he takes suggestions from me. Plus,” Garcia inclined his head toward Lavinia, “he's soft on victimless crime.”

Lavinia declined to rise to this bait. “And that time will come when?” I asked.

Garcia shook his head. “When we nail a suspect.”

“Do you have one?”

Garcia said nothing.

“Nobody?” Lavinia abruptly asked. “Stepnowski was a has-been musician trying to rip off a music store. How low can you go? He couldn't have had many friends left.”

Garcia looked blandly at her. “Being friendless and ripping off King Kramer are not killing offenses—wouldn't you agree?”

“Uh, right,” Lavinia admitted. “Not at all.”

“Did you talk with his wife?” I asked. “Did he have a band together?”

“We found his address book at the warehouse. It was full of musicians and club owners, producers, sound engineers and not a few drug dealers, but a lot of the numbers are out of date. So far only one person, a bass player, admits to associating with Stepnowski, but it's been two years since they played together. Nobody seems to think Stepnowski had a band organized at all.”

“That's really sad,” Lavinia said, almost to herself.

I said, “The De Haro warehouse seemed ideal rehearsal space. Why else would he have it? Was there a bunch of gear there? How about the PA system he bought from Kramer?”

“Nothing. In the room behind the one in which you found Stepnowski, we found an odd selection of parts—a small guitar amp, some cables, a couple of mike stands—but no mikes—a ruined double-neck guitar, a broken reel-to-reel tape machine, a ukulele, two or three folding chairs
….
Nothing like what you'd expect in a working studio. No grand piano, no amp stack, no gobos, no mixing console, no patch bays or electronics racks—nothing like that.”

Lavinia frowned. “What are gobos?”

“Portable sound baffles,” Garcia patiently explained. “There are many kinds, but you position them around a player and his gear to isolate or shape his sound. Especially a drummer.”

“You know what gobos are?” I asked. “How come?”