Colleen heard booming rock music as she walked down Broadway, where the Mabuhay, the old Filipino nightclub turned punk venue, was wedged in amongst the nudie bars and rip-off nightclubs.
Down at the Fab Mab, she felt noticeably out of place in her bellbottoms, cowboy boots, and bomber jacket amongst the kids in ripped jeans, torn shirts, and leather jackets dripping with chains and held together with safety pins. Mohawks and spiky haircuts abounded. Safety pins had made it through a few ears and cheeks as well. She checked the line waiting to get in. No Steve Davis. She got in line. Whoever was onstage was making the walls shake as a singer bellowed about someone being his sex bomb, baby, yeah over a relentless dirge.
Inside the Mabuhay, the mosh pit was in full swing, kids slam-dancing like drunken football players. Colleen pushed her way through, looking for Steve, throwing up an elbow when one body in motion collided with her. Onstage the band played low-slung guitars in a deafening attack. She settled in against the bar, ordered a beer, checked her watch.
Ten past eleven.
Twenty minutes later, she ordered another beer, hoping Steve wasn’t going to bail again. She needed to get his reports back to him. She also wanted to learn more about his father.
And then she saw him, getting his hand stamped by the bouncer at the front door. Looking remarkably subdued compared to the rest of the crowd, in a faded denim jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans, short black hair slicked back. His dark eyes were intense.
He saw her right away. She wasn’t that hard to make out in this crowd. He walked straight through the slam dancers in the center of the floor, pushing one aside on his way up to the bar.
She raised her beer bottle. “Glad you made it.” She had to shout in order to be heard over the music.
Steve sidled up to the bar, ordered a shot, downed it. He turned around, leaned against the bar, crossed his arms over his chest. He radiated tension.
“Anyone follow you?” she asked.
He shook his head no.
“I’ve got your reports in my car,” she said. “I didn’t want to walk around with them.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”
She was a little surprised at his urgency but she set her half-finished beer down on the sticky bar. It was painfully loud anyway.
Outside, he lit a cigarette. Colleen nodded up the street, where her car was parked near the Broadway tunnel, deliberately out of the way in case someone was following her.
They walked, crossing Columbus. Carol Doda’s flashing nipples lit up the Condor Club on the corner.
They turned up the side street where she had parked, stopped at her car.
Steve took a puff of his Marlboro, nodded in admiration. “’72 Gran Torino. Sport Roof. Not too shabby.”
“Don’t look too close. It’s got its share of dings and scratches.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s got a Cleveland V8.” Steve smoked, exhaled. “Four hundred and twenty-nine cubic inches. Three hundred and seventy-five horses.”
“That’s why I picked it up cheap, with gas at sixty-five cents a gallon.”
He eyed her with what appeared to be newfound respect. A woman driving a serious muscle car.
“You know cars,” she said.
For the first time, Steve smiled at her. Half smiled. “I knew all the models before I could barely stand. My dad would pull me to one side, so I couldn’t see the badges or emblems—not that I could read them anyway—and he’d say, ‘What kind is that, Stevie?’ And I’d say, ‘T’underbird.’ Couldn’t pronounce ‘Thunderbird.’ But I knew the lines of the car all right.” He smoked, eyes distant in some memory. “Knew ’em all.”
“You like Fords,” she said. “Same here.”
“‘First On Race Day,’” he said. “My old man used to say, ‘No, Stevie. It’s: ‘Fix Or Repair Daily.’ But then, why are all the cop cruisers Fords? Because they’re the best. He used to take me out in his LTD, put me on his lap, let me drive. I remember one time—” Steve stopped, took a tight drag on his cigarette, let the smoke billow out hard. “Fuck it.” He stood there, like a boy, looking at the sidewalk now. “Fuck it, anyway.”
She nodded in sympathy. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, or your mom.” She went around to the trunk to give him a minute to be on his own, opened it, got her shoulder bag, came back with it. She pulled a manila envelope from the bag and held it out.
“You don’t know what a help these were, Steve.”
He took the reports, shrugged. “You make copies?”
“I did,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. I have a couple of questions.”
“Where?” he said, smirking. “One of the girlie bars?”
“We can talk in the car. You can admire the genuine simulated wood dash.”
“I don’t want to leave my mom on her own for too long. She’s not sleeping.”
Neither was he, judging by the rings around his eyes and gaunt look to his face.
“I’ll walk you to your car, then,” she asked. “We can talk on the way.”
“Whatever.” He took one more drag, flipped his cigarette out in the street, turned, headed off, slapping the manila envelope on his leg as he walked.
She caught up. “Thanks to those reports, I’m finally getting somewhere on Margaret Copeland, that girl who was killed eleven years ago. Your dad kept those reports for a reason. He wanted the case solved.”
“Yeah,” he said, smacking his leg absentmindedly with the manila envelope. “It was a big deal to him.”
They walked.
“Your dad took early retirement not long after the Margaret Copeland murder—for disability, right?”
He stopped at a matte black ’65 Mustang half a block from the Mabuhay. The club was throbbing with noise. A crowd milled around outside. “They called it a couple of things, but he was let go. They gave him some story about his drinking, but Dad kept a lid on his boozing then. He was just one of those guys who stayed an inch off the ground. Well, so do half the force. All cops drink. He was a good cop. Everyone said so. He made detective early.” Steve got his keys out.
“How long after the Margaret Copeland case was he let go?”
“A few months?” Steve said, rubbing his eyebrow. “It was some bullshit they made up. Stress. At first, he pushed back. Then he got a special payment to grease the wheels. Something they pulled out of a hat. He paid the house off with it, so me and Mom would be set, he said. It was like he knew he wasn’t going to live that long. After that his drinking got out of control.”
“Did he ever talk to you about the case?”
“Not to me. But I’d hear other people talk about it. Kids at school. I’d hear their parents. Never my mom and dad, though. They never talked about it with me around. But one day, when Dad was loaded, I asked him.”
“And he told you?”
“Just that the case was sidelined because of some bigwig.”
That was the first she’d heard of that. “Any idea who?”
Steve shook his head sadly. “Next day he asked me never to breathe a word. Said the subject was off limits. Wasn’t gonna let me have to carry that around. I could tell he was sorry just for telling me what little he did.”
“But he told you about the reports?”
“No. But I knew where he kept them. In the garage. In the rafters. I was a nosy kid.”
“I think you just wanted to know what was going on and cared about him. You think your mother knows where the reports are?”
Steve thought about that a moment, squinted. “I’m not sure. But I did hear her talking on the phone the other day. Someone was asking her whether she thought my dad had them. They were lost, I guess. She said she didn’t know. But my mom plays her cards close to her chest.”
Colleen cleared her throat. “Who was talking to your mom on the phone?”
Steve looked Colleen in the eye, then looked away. “I don’t know about this conversation anymore. This might’ve been a mistake.”
“No one will know you told me, Steve.”
“We don’t talk about my mom.” He sat back on the rear fender of his Mustang. “That’s where I draw the line.”
“Understood—but this is important. Do you think it was Frank Madrid on the phone?”
Steve looked away. There was the equivalent of silence while horns honked on Broadway.
When Steve didn’t answer, she said: “Frank’s an old friend of the family—isn’t he?”
Steve returned her gaze. “My old man never liked him, not really.”
“But they were partners.”
“When Frank got promoted. There was talk about how he pulled that off. But that’s a whole different ball of wax. You have to work with a partner, my dad said. Sometimes it’s the hardest part of the job. They can be bigger assholes than the guys you’re supposed to catch. Frank wormed his way in—always coming around the house, sucking up to Mom. She didn’t like him at first. I remember right before they let my dad go, I was nine or ten, listening at the top of the stairs. I heard Frank talking my dad into taking that fucking package. Dad didn’t want to do it. He wanted to bust that case. He was a good cop. Frank said Dad had to take one for the team or people’d make life difficult. He understood how Dad felt, but it had to be done. I remember not long after that Dad talked to me—he was getting loaded more and more—and he said, ‘Stevie, if a man says he’s your friend, don’t just take him at his word. You make sure, son.’ And I knew he was talking about Frank.”
“So it was Frank who was able to get your father a lump sum payment?”
“Somehow. When Frank swung that, it changed my mom’s mind about him. She was never crazy about Dad being a cop to begin with, but she knew what it meant to him, so she kept it to herself. But when they dangled that money, well, that was all she wrote. Mom pushed Dad to take the package. She said the writing was on the wall and he should just quit and take it before they found another way to get rid of him, and then he might not get anything. So Dad threw in the towel. Started his next career, warming a barstool down at Dizzy’s.”
So Frank Madrid knew the right people. Or the wrong people. “Any idea how Frank managed the payoff?”
Then Colleen saw an SFPD black-and-white crawling down Broadway, other side of the street. Damn. “Don’t look now, Steve.”
Steve turned, saw the cop car, pushed himself up off the Mustang. “Holy fuck,” he said, thrusting the manila envelope at Colleen. “Take this.”
Colleen took the envelope, keeping it low, slipped it into her black leather shoulder bag, flipped the flap shut.
The black-and-white stopped in the middle of Broadway. A lean middle-aged cop with a pencil mustache and pointed bald head sat at the wheel, looking at the Mustang, then at Colleen and Steve. Another cop sat in the passenger seat.
“Hey, Stevie,” the cop shouted, loud enough to carry across Broadway. His arm was resting on the door sill. “I thought that was your ride. What you up to, man?” He saw Colleen, gave her a wry smile.
“Hey, Don,” Steve shouted back. He shrugged, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Nothing.”
Colleen eyed the vehicle number on the door. She made a mental note: 226.
“Nothing?” the cop named Don said from the cruiser. He eyeballed Colleen’s body up and down, gave her a nod of approval. “She doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
Colleen wanted to slap his face.
Don flipped on the hazard lights, got out of the cruiser, hitched up his pants, strolled across Broadway, putting a hand out to stop cars.
“Be careful, Steve,” Colleen said quietly as Don approached.
“He’s an asshole.”
“Let me handle it.”
Don maneuvered between two parked cars and stepped up onto the sidewalk and stood in front of them, long legs apart, one hand on the butt of his gun in the holster, the other on the handcuff case of his duty belt.
“So?” he said to the two of them, giving a playful frown that was anything but. “Nothing?”
“That’s what I said,” Steve said.
Don crossed his arms. “You know, Steve, if it was my old man just died, I might be home with my mother, not out running around.”
“Sorry, Don,” Steve said. “What I meant to say was, ‘It’s none of your fucking business.’”
Don rubbed his bony face. “So it’s gonna be like that?” He gave Colleen a malicious stare. “Who are you?” He turned to Steve. “She’s not the one been snooping around, is she?”
“Also, none of your damn business,” Steve said, fists clenching, harboring a young man’s temper, easily lost.
Colleen put her hand on Steve’s arm, tried to convey a message to shut up and play along.
“We bumped into each other and decided to go for a drink,” she said to Don. “You know …” She dropped her voice, let it slide into as much innuendo as possible.
“Is that what they call it now?” Don said. “You got to be ten years older than he is.”
“More like fifteen,” Colleen said, wanting to punch his lights out but giving him a sly wink, glad to steer the conversation away from anything related to Jim Davis.
Don gave her a look of contempt. “You know, Steve, I’m really sorry about your old man. I was a friend …”
“Bullshit,” Steve said, vibrating with anger. “All you and Frank and the others ever did was buy him too many drinks and put him down.”
“Let me tell you something, Stevie. No one ever had to encourage your dad to drink too much. He managed just fine on his own.”
“Get fucked,” Steve hissed. “You never respected him, because he was twice the cop you’ll ever be. He had you guys figured out. Don’t you have something better to do? Like go down to Hunters Point, hit on the teenybopper hookers? I know all about that shit.”
Colleen put her hand on Steve’s arm again, gave him a shut the hell up look. Then, to Don: “Give it a rest. Can’t you see he needs a break? We were just going for a drink.”
“Classy.” Don turned to Steve. “I do have a lot of respect for your old man, Stevie—whatever you think. I’d like to see a little more out of you. Maybe you can start by taking care of your mom, instead of her.” He shook his head, turned, headed back between the parked cars, putting his hand out to stop traffic. He got into the black-and-white and set off with a squeal of tires.
When the patrol car was down the street, Colleen said to Steve, “How well does this Don know Frank Madrid?”
“Everybody knows Frank.” Steve smoked.
So maybe Don didn’t know exactly what Colleen was up to. But he might still report back to Frank. “That guy could be trouble, Steve. Watch out for him—and Frank. Frank is onto me.” Colleen retrieved the envelope. “Go home, and when you are sure—absolutely sure—no one is watching you, not even your mother—put these back in the rafters in the garage where your dad left them.”
Steve took the envelope, smoked his cigarette. “You think they’re on to me, too?”
“If not, they might be soon. Like you say, your mother could know about the reports. It’s hard to think she wouldn’t, unless your father kept them from her. And from the phone call, it sounds like Frank suspects she does. So you need to get them back in place, pronto, before someone finds them gone. Because if someone thinks you’ve been helping me …”
Colleen left the sentence unfinished.
Steve smoked, gave a nod.
Colleen said, “If Frank asks you about tonight, you say that I bumped into you outside the Mabuhay, asked you to go for a drink, but we got interrupted by Don, and you went home. You didn’t tell me anything. That puts it on me and leaves you in the clear. Got that?”
Steve smoked, letting it sink in. “Yeah.”
“You did the right thing, Steve, sending the reports my way. Your dad would be proud of you.”
“Who knows?” he said, dropping the cigarette on the sidewalk, stubbing it out. He gave her one last look, turned, headed out into the street with the envelope to get in his car.
Colleen listened to the Mustang start up with a rumble, then watched it jerk out onto Broadway with a screech and thought about the Margaret Copeland case being shut down because of some bigwig.