Chapter 1.11
Dagger pulled out a chocolate bar and handed it to the homeless woman who lived in the alley behind Brock’s law office. She sat cross-legged in the gravel outside a sagging refrigerator box that had been turned on its side and was decorated with graffiti and dried flowers all along the lower half. Plastic bags were duct taped across what served as the roof and halfway down the sides in an effort to keep rain from turning her home to pulp. Inside were carefully folded blankets, a threadbare pillow, and a paper bag filled with an assortment of things.
She looked Latino at first glance, but Dagger knew better. He saw past the layers of dirt that had tinted her skin and picked up the faintest edges of pink around her eyes. She was white, and strands of black and gray hair peeked out from under the dirty American flag scarf she’d wrapped around her head. Dagger had keen vision but couldn’t place her age. She looked sixty, but she could have been at least a decade or two younger. Homeless life was brutal.
He had a keen sense of smell, too, and her odor was difficult to take. She stank of going many months without a bath and of all the scents of the alley that had adhered to her like a second skin. There was a trace of cheap cologne too, like perhaps she’d found a discarded bottle in the trash and upended the last of it on her. Dagger concentrated to keep the bile from rising.
He watched her devour the chocolate bar, and he handed her a second, which she held reverently for a moment and then stretched behind her and placed inside the paper bag for later. There were a few other homeless hanging about this alley, but no other shanties. He would get to them next. He’d come with a satchel stocked with a good supply of candy, jerky, and packages of dried apricots and pineapple.
Dagger had picked her first because from the looks of her cardboard hovel, she’d been here for quite some time.
“Sadie,” she said. “Name’s Sadie.” She raised an eyebrow.
“Dagger,” he replied. “Dagger McKenzie.”
“Odd name that. You’re private, right?” Sadie gave him a suspicious look. “You don’t look like police.”
“Yeah, I’m private,” he said.
“Looking into that lawyer’s death, aren’t you? That young one what died last night?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t know nothing about it.” But her eyes said different.
Dagger reached into his satchel and pulled out a box of granola bars and tossed them to her. Homeless currency. It was his personal policy not to give the homeless any money; he didn’t want them purchasing drugs or booze to drown their desperation and feed their addictions.
“I didn’t see nothing that night.” She held the box and looked at it, turned it over as if reading the ingredients. Then she placed it next to the paper bag. “Except that old Buick that kept going around the block. Was gonna come through my alley, but it was a big car. Driver tried it and backed out.” She cackled. “Car was rusted to shit anyway, hitting a couple of trash bins in my alley wouldn’t have hurt it much.”
Dagger worked a kink out of his neck and fixed his eyes on Sadie’s.
“All right,” she admitted. “I saw a little bit more. I went between those buildings over there, getting aluminum. Built them things so tight together a fat man couldn’t get between them, but I ain’t never been fat. I goes in there ’cause people toss cans in when they walk by on the sidewalk. They think the gap is good for garbage. So I went in there, picking up cans last night. Had me a flashlight that worked.”
“Go on.”
“I saw the Buick pull up out on Haight and park in front of my crack. Didn’t park very well, neither, too far out. But I knew they’d be gone before a cop could write them a ticket. It had that look, you know, of being in a hurry.”
“Go on.”
“That rusted to shit Buick had the back window down when it circled the last time, and I saw a monster-thing inside. Looked a little bit like the devil, all black and red and with ears so pointed like that. First I thought it was some client of that attorney. I seen those types, not the devil types but other monster-things, go in that office. I don’t like them, OTs. Not a bit. But when that Buick kept going around the block, I knew it was for something no good.”
“How so?”
“It had that look about it, you know, both the car and the devil thing, a cruising for trouble look and an in a hurry look. On that last pass, I saw the guy what was driving. He’d leaned over the seat and was talking to the devil thing. And then after they’d parked out front of my aluminum crack, I saw him even better, just before he pulled up his hood and got out of the car. You live in this neighborhood, this city long enough, you can read people at a look, you know? He was Latin, and a ganger. Had tats on his neck, the prison kind, they don’t look as good as the ones you get professional. I could’ve smelled ’em they got any closer. They was right there in front of the building crack where I was looking with my flashlight. That attorney should’ve known better than to invite them in, a ganger and an OT. Someone pulls up a hood, that’s trouble. I heard that attorney invite them in. It’s his own damn fault he got killed.”
Dagger found himself sadly agreeing with her. A big city like this, you had to be on guard. San Francisco was an impossible distance from Mayberry.
“Describe this man, Sadie, as close as you can, the tattoos. The one with the hood.”
“For a twenty I will.”
“No money.”
“A ten then. It’ll cost you a ten.”
“No.” Dagger’s eyes narrowed and he tossed her a thick shrink-wrapped pack of jerky. He set his lips in a thin line, a practiced expression meant to unnerve his target. Sadie was tough, but after a few moments of stare-down, she shrugged and started talking again.
She provided a surprisingly detailed description, down to the lightning bolt scar on the man’s cheek, and a tattoo on his neck—though she couldn’t quite see the entire design. It was enough, the symbol of a dangerous man. And Dagger knew where to find the sort.
“Saw him good ’cause he was under a streetlight. Didn’t need to shine my flashlight on him. ’Sides, I’d turned it off. Didn’t want him to see me. He had that look, you know.”
“Did you tell the police about this?”
She crossed her arms and sucked in her lower lip, giving a shake of her head and glancing away. “Don’t mind cops, I don’t. But I don’t like them OTs. Them OTs eat us.”
Dagger raised an eyebrow.
“Us, people without paperwork, people who ain’t got an address. Who misses people without an address? Who looks out for us? And, besides, that devil thing, it gave me the creeps. Not going to tell the cops about that, I’m not. Besides, they only talked to Jerry, the cops.” She gave a nod to the homeless fellow closest nearby. “Jerry’ll talk to anybody. Talks a lot, but the words don’t mean much.”
Dagger waited, listening to bottle flies that buzzed against a trashcan on the opposite side of the alley. There was a swarm of them, and the afternoon sun cut down between buildings and heated the metal can and whatever food scraps had been tossed inside that were apparently beyond even the homeless people’s tastes. It was getting almost too cool for flies.
“I was still in the crack, picking aluminum … there was a lot of aluminum that night … when the hooded man came back out of the law office for his car. Tossed something in the crack. I was afraid he’d seen me there, but he was in too much of a hurry to notice. And after he drove away I looked for what he’d tossed. Turned my flashlight back on.”
“What was it, Sadie? What did he throw in?”
She waited, clearly wanting another bribe, but Dagger shook his head.
“Didn’t want it, what he’d tossed,” she said. “The hooded fellow was a druggie and had shot up. It was a hypo. I don’t do drugs.”
Those kinds of drugs anyway, Dagger thought.
“Don’t want AIDS or anything like that. No resale value on hypos that I know of.”
“Anything else happen? Did you see anything else?”
“Yeah. The cops came and the ambulance. Lights all over, lots of noise. Me and Jerry went out to get a better look. Had to go around ’cause Jerry is fat and won’t fit through the crack. Had to go around and up the sidewalk. That’s when we found out the devil thing had killed the lawyer. The cops were pulling the devil thing out of the lawyer’s place.”
Dagger squatted, eye-level with the homeless woman. “What about before that, Sadie?”
“Already told you. Isn’t nothing else to tell. Done told you more than you needed to know. Don’t need to keep jawing with you.”
“Before last night, Sadie. What did you see before last night?”
She drew her lips together, like she’d just bitten into a lemon, and she leaned forward. The bile rose higher and Dagger felt it on his tongue; she had that serious of a stink about her.
“What did you see the night before that, Sadie?”
“The Buick the night before, and the night before that, too. But not any nights previous. Just the two nights before the devil thing killed the lawyer.” She paused, eyes brightening. “That’s because the ones in the Buick, they were casing the place, right? They were planning to kill the young lawyer, weren’t they? Just looking for the best time.”
Dagger nodded. “Tell me some more about the Buick, Sadie.” He added one more candy bar to his bribe, and then, when he moved on, repeated the exercise with the other homeless people in the alley behind Thomas Brock’s law office. But none of them were as helpful as Sadie.
Dagger had not intended to spend his afternoon in this alley. In fact, he’d not planned on getting up before noon … rough night with the moon so full. He’d tried to ignore the phone buzzing this morning, but he saw the Caller ID: Evelyn Love. He’d done some work for Saul Goldstein’s office and had met Evelyn there, liking her enough to add to her education—with skills they didn’t teach in law school. So Dagger had picked up the phone, his voice thick with sleep and the aftereffects of his rough night, and listened to Evey’s tale, agreeing at the end of it to investigate Thomas’s murder.
Because of Evey, Dagger had done some work for Thomas Brock, finding the young lawyer almost a little too green and too much of a boy scout for his liking. Still, Thomas paid on time.
Saul had died of a heart attack and left Evey out in that proverbial cold, and now Thomas was dead. Poor Evey, she didn’t have a lot of luck with employers. At least she’d managed to outlive them.
Dagger had talked to Thomas’s ghost before making his rounds in the alley, wanting to hear the recounting of what happened. Not as helpful as Dagger had liked, but then he realized how quickly Thomas’s demise had come. Sadie’s information had been far more useful. And he realized Sadie had been right: Thomas should have known better than to have opened his door to the fey and the hooded man.
O O O
Following Sadie’s leads, Dagger found the biker bar hellhole about an hour after leaving the alley. Looking like the set of a rap music video, the place was wedged between an auto repair business that he thought might double as a chop shop and a tattoo parlor that displayed dragons and motorcycles in the window.
Dagger strolled in. He knew it would be dark in here, and it didn’t disappoint. The place reeked of spilled beer and sweat, the two dozen occupants an equal mix of candidates for Weight Watchers and models for Iron Man Magazine. All of them had tattoos, probably regulars of the place next door, it was just a matter of reading them to find a target. Three steps into the place he locked eyes with someone, the ink marking him a member of the Northern Structure. When Sadie had described one of the tattoos, Dagger realized Thomas Brock had pissed off someone either very powerful or very vile.
The ganger agreed to talk to Dagger alone in the men’s room.
Dagger had been critical of Thomas Brock for his lapse in judgment letting the fey and his handler into his office but he realized his own judgment wasn’t always perfect either.
The largest of the three thugs grabbed Dagger’s head and slammed it against the bathroom sink. The other two had been holding his arms, no easy feat. The men’s room was small and dirty, smelling of soap, beer, and piss; and Dagger should have known better than to agree to talk to the ganger back here “out of earshot of my buddies.”
Dagger usually smelled a setup, but he’d gotten so little sleep and was in a hurry, and those two factors had played against him. The thugs were strong, and though he could’ve easily taken any of them without breaking a sweat, together the three were getting the best of him. The tall one slammed his head a second time, and Dagger thought he saw stars. He struggled to rip himself free, but instead was pushed down to the filthy tile floor, his face near a patch of dried vomit, eyes watering from pong that was thick and choking at this level. Keen senses were inconvenient sometimes.
They rolled him over onto his back, and the tall one started kicking his side, the other two grabbing a tighter hold. For an instant Dagger’s mind took him back to Angola, where he’d run afoul of a terrorist cell in a bar, the thrum of artillery landing nearby covering the sounds of the slugfest—that fight had been in a men’s room too. Here it was the racket that tried to pass itself off as music blaring from a jukebox on the other side of the men’s room wall. In Angola he’d ended up in ICU for a handful of days. He should have died in that godawful place, but he was tough and healed quickly.
And he wasn’t about to die now, not in this hellhole. The two holding him tried to pin his legs too, but they weren’t quite big enough for that. Their mistake had been taking Dagger off his feet. He kicked at them now, like a wild animal filled with a frenetic, desperate energy, dislodging one while at the same time the tall guy kept kicking him. The dislodged thug tripped, and Dagger wiggled one arm free, brought it up and around, hand opening and fingers reaching. He found the right arm of the thug that still held him and dug his fingers deep into the flesh. The man wore one of those muscle shirts, big swath of skin exposed; it was an easy target for Dagger. The man howled in surprise and rage.
Dagger had just bought himself a heartbeat, and in it he managed to propel himself up from the tile and into the tall one, lashing out, getting behind him, and pinning his arms, swinging him around to be a shield against the other two who were recovering and coming at him again. The song on the jukebox ended and another equally atrocious one began, just as the tall one caught a knife in the gut that had been meant for Dagger.
Dagger pushed his now-dying meat shield at the thug who still gripped the knife handle, driving both men against a stall door and into the stall. Dagger kicked at the other guy, high and hard with the heel of his boot, and catching him in the groin. The man let out a reflexive wail and dropped to his knees, cupping himself. Dagger had another heartbeat to his advantage.
In the stall he pushed the dying thug hard into the other, ramming them both against the toilet again and again, until the meat shield was dead weight. Dagger released the shield and brought both hands up into one fist and drove them down on the neck of the woozy one against the toilet. He recognized the snap of a collarbone and in the dim yellow bathroom light saw the pupils of the thug’s eyes dilate and float back.
One dead—not of his doing, one unconscious—of his doing, Dagger turned his attention to the remaining thug who was holding his balls.
“Get up.”
The man groaned and struggled to his feet, and Dagger shoved him against the door to keep anyone else from coming in and joining the party.
“Say something interesting,” Dagger threatened. “Unless you want me to turn your brains into Jell-O pudding, you better say something real interesting.”
Sweat was thick on the thug’s forehead. He had a tattoo on his neck, and though Sadie hadn’t clearly seen the one on the guy driving the Buick, Dagger saw this one and recognized it, the mark of a Latin prison gang, the Northern Structure. The slang had fit, too, that Thomas’s ghost had regurgitated for him:
“You’re in the hat, lawyer man.” You’re on the hit list.
“Your case is gonna be closed, chapete.” Idiot.
Prison slang used by gang members.
Dagger knew from a previous case he could find ex-cons at this biker bar, including Latin gang members.
“Talk fast. And talk a toda madre.” Dagger threw some of the slang back at the ganger. “I’ll give you some hard candy, asshole. You’ll be the one growing daisies.”