“My husband’s not home,” Mary Davis said to Colleen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She stood at the front door of a stucco house streaked with mildew on Paris Street, just up the hill from Mission, amidst similar junior fives built during the Second World War. It was late morning.
The street was crisscrossed with overhead wires. Mary Davis was middle-aged, thick around the middle, but not fat. A cigarette dangled from her lips. She wore a green apron with “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” on it and she had a curly red perm that was about as stiff as her attitude.
Maybe she was cool to Colleen because a younger woman was asking for her husband.
“It’s a business matter,” Colleen said, holding up one of her cards.
Ms. Davis threw the limp dish towel over her shoulder, took the cigarette from her mouth, and yanked the card from Colleen’s fingers.
From upstairs, buzz-saw guitars and ninety-mile-an-hour drums blasted. Colleen could make out vocals that proclaimed that someone was a “fucking piece of shit.” Punk rock, the latest musical offering.
“Steve!” Ms. Davis yelled over her shoulder. “Turn that down!”
A moment later, the music dropped in volume.
Ms. Davis took an angry puff on her cigarette as she read Colleen’s business card. “Is he in some kind of trouble again? I made a payment on the furniture bill last week.”
“I’m not a bill collector,” Colleen said. “It’s about an old case he worked on.”
Ms. Davis squinted as smoke curled up her face, studying Colleen. “This better not be about that dead girl.”
“Who?” Colleen said, feigning confusion. After a decade, was Margaret Copeland still an issue for the family of the man who had once worked the case? “No, something else.”
“What something else?”
“I really can’t say.” Colleen nodded at her card in the woman’s hand. “That’s why it says confidential on the card.” She gave a smile. “I have to promise my clients complete confidentiality. There is some money involved, though, for information.”
Mary Davis took a puff. “How much money?”
“That would depend.”
A door opened upstairs, letting more punk music seep out momentarily before it slammed shut. Footsteps thumped down the stairs.
A young man around twenty appeared, with slicked-back jet-black hair. He wore ripped jeans and a T-shirt with a Mustang pony logo. A pack of cigarettes was rolled up in one sleeve.
“Where’s your dad?” Mary Davis asked him.
“Where do you think?”
“You better call about that job today, Steve.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He sauntered off to the kitchen, slamming that door, too.
The woman turned back to Colleen as she pocketed Colleen’s business card in her apron. “Dizzy’s,” she said. “Down on Mission. Tell him the shower’s backed up again while you’re at it.” She shut the door before Colleen could say goodbye.
Dizzy’s on Mission wasn’t hard to find; the ’50s-era neon sign outlined a man in top hat and tails clinging to a lamppost with drunken Xs for eyes.
Inside the dimly lit bar, the non-working crowd and a few people who probably should have been at work were hunched over glasses while the Giants played with the sound turned down on a fuzzy TV. Two men slammed dice cups. The jukebox was playing a song about a woman torn between two lovers and feeling like a fool. The only other woman in the place was the fireplug behind the bar serving drinks with a flat-line mouth, as if she were dispensing cyanide.
“Hey,” a big guy in a Hawaiian shirt with flame-on toucans said to Colleen, spinning around on his barstool when she entered. He had a nose like a pomegranate and a beer gut to support the theory of how the nose might have gotten to that state. He looked like the class clown, grown up into bar jester. “You looking for me, sports model?” He gave a leer that was probably meant to be a winning smile.
“I am if your name is Jim Davis,” she said. But he didn’t look like the guy. From the ten-year-old photo in the Chronicle, Jim Davis looked more like an older version of the slender kid listening to punk rock up at the house on Paris Street. A lot like the man bent over an empty shot glass and half a beer in an otherwise vacant corner booth. That guy looked like he’d been beating his liver for the last decade.
“Bingo,” the big man said.
Colleen strolled over, hands in the pockets of her leather bomber jacket.
“Jim Davis?”
Jim Davis looked up at her with watery eyes. He had a five o’clock shadow that was at least a day old. But most of all, he radiated sadness. It was deep within him, the core of his being.
“Do I know you?” he said defensively.
“Not yet.” She smiled, introduced herself, got out one of her business cards, slipped it across the table. Jim Davis read it as he sipped his beer.
“Okay if I sit down?” Colleen asked.
He drained his beer, looked at her with raised eyebrows. She took the hint.
“Boilermaker?” she asked.
He shrugged, twisting his smudged beer glass.
A minute later she was back with a beer and bourbon for Jim Davis and a fizzy beer for herself.
Jim Davis downed the shot, smacked his lips, drank a swallow of beer, rubbed his nose. “So what’s this about?”
“Margaret Copeland,” she said quietly.
Jim Davis looked as if he’d been slapped. He drank a third of his beer. “Now there’s a name from the past.”
“You worked on her case.”
Jim glanced over at the bar. The big man in the wild shirt had gone to the restroom.
Jim looked back at her, his voice low. “Until it was deep-sixed, I did.”
Interesting.
Jim drained his beer and had that look like he was ready to get up and leave.
Colleen nodded at the empty glasses. “Ready for another?”
“Depends on where this conversation is going.”
“Edward Copeland—Margaret’s father—hired me to look into her murder.”
Jim Davis sat back. “After all this time?”
“After all this time.”
“Lucky you.”
“Got some time to fill me in?” she said.
“The report is on file.”
“Trouble is, it’s going to take thirty days for me to get a copy—and that’s if I get it. SFPD seem to be dragging their feet.”
He gave a silent laugh, backed up with a weak grin. “That a surprise to you?”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means it might be best to mind your own business.”
“I can do that some other time. Right now, I’d like to talk to you—the guy who wrote the report. And also find out what wasn’t written down—if anything.”
He stood up, wobbly, closed his eyes for a moment, found his balance. “Thanks for the drink.”
She put her hand on his arm, dropped her voice. “I’m willing to pay to hear your side of the story.”
He frowned, seemed to think about that, sat back down. “How much are we talking about?”
“Depends on what you have.” They were conversing in hushed tones.
He dropped his voice to a near whisper. “The original report.”
This seemed to be her lucky day. They eyed each other.
“You have it?” she asked.
He gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Five hundred?” she said. Over two weeks’ pay—if one were working.
He frowned, shook his head from side to side, held up two fingers.
She took a deep breath. She didn’t have that much. She’d have to get it from Mr. Copeland, providing he even went for it. But she suspected he would. Time was the most valuable commodity to him right now. And the fact that Jim Davis had the original meant something.
“I need to make a phone call,” she said. “When?”
“Give me an hour.”
“Make it two,” she said. She might have to run to the bank. “Here?”
He shook his head.
Then she realized. Dizzy’s was a cop hangout. And ex-cops going nowhere. Jim Davis didn’t want to be overheard talking about Margaret Copeland here.
Even a decade after the fact.
“So tell me where,” she said.
Pulling a pack of Lucky Strikes out of the pocket of his plaid flannel shirt, Jim Davis shook one out, managed to get it into his mouth. He fumbled for a book of paper matches, tore one off.
“Manor Coffee Shop,” he mumbled as he lit his cigarette. “Bring cash. I’ll bring the report.”
“Twelve thirty,” she said quietly, checking her watch, then sipping beer. “By the way, your shower is backed up.”
He nodded as he got his cigarette going, sucked on it so hard it crumpled.
From the back of the bar, the squeal of a restroom door preceded the big guy sauntering back to his stool at the bar.
Jim Davis stood up and, in a loud voice, said to Colleen: “My wife made a payment just last week! We’re doing the best we can. You can’t get blood out of a damn stone.” He gave Colleen a drunken wink before he stumbled toward the door.
“Too bad, Jimmy,” the big man said to him on his way out. “I thought maybe you were gonna get lucky.”
“Story of my life, Frank. Damn bill collectors.”
The door swung open and a scrap of gray light lit up Jim Davis as he staggered out on Mission, pulling a tail of cigarette smoke behind him. The door cut it off.
Colleen got up, leaving her unfinished beer.
“That asshole a friend of yours?” she said to the big guy in the shirt as she headed for the door.
“You have a nice day, now,” he said to Colleen as she left.
Then he rubbed his face.
“Brenda,” he said, throwing a dollar bill from the cash by his drink into the drink well. “I’m going to need some dimes for the pay phone.”