founders. G.G. Swift, who had picked out the territory for stockyards and a cattle market, wanted the site’s name to parallel that of his Western Meat Company’s plants in South Chicago and South Omaha. Bethlehem Steel and Fuller Paint came to South San Francisco, and the two world wars brought a hefty, if short-lived shipbuilding industry. The sign is now, like many great landmarks, a bit of an anachronism.
I went over to the I in Industrial and copped a squat. The lights of the airport were visible off in the distance, as were the blinking beacons from planes coming in for a landing as a slow fog crept in from Half Moon Bay. I shook my head, called myself a fool, and took the crinkled blue envelope out of my pocket.
I slit it open with a finger and took out a single page and unfolded it. Same handwriting.
David:
Somehow I fell in love with you. Your phone is tapped. Be careful. Don’t tell anyone about this letter—burn it.
Love,
Ashley.
I cursed myself, calling the entire affair a fat load of hokum even as I took out my Zippo and lit the page, holding the envelope to the flame and letting it catch, holding it up against the view of the bay and the airport and the speeding red tracers of the 101, thinking, Ashley, my ass. My fingers got singed and I dropped the ashes and stomped it all out on the I.
Ashley’s in love with me? This crazy girl that I’ve never met? The girl who’s gone missing and McCaffrey hired me to find? The girl who’s—somehow, someway—painting me? My phones are tapped? Am I supposed to take any of this seriously? Is she in some kind of trouble? And the hell with her, am I in some kind of trouble? What the hell did McCaffrey get me into? And what does any of this have to do with me?
I walked down to the Schoolhouse Deli and bought a fifth of Old Crow. One way or another I was going to need it.
5
It must have been about three in the morning, as I was sleeping the joyous, dreamless sleep of the bourbon drunk, when I heard the three beeps. I once had an alarm system in my house, but the alarm company doesn’t come and rip it out when you can’t pay the bill, it just becomes a glorified smoke detector. Whenever a door opens in my house—the front door, or even the door to downstairs—the old alarm sounds three annoying beeps. I jumped out of bed and went to the closet for my gun, realizing that it wasn’t loaded. I must have been standing just behind the door to my room, because when it opened suddenly I caught it right in the side of the head.
I barely had a chance to moan before a hand grabbed me and dragged me into the living room, sitting me down hard on the couch and attacking me with a piercing bright light. When my eyes adjusted I was looking at a face like a slab of meat.
“You Itchy Crane?”
“Not even sure you got the right guy?”
I got a slap in the face for that.
“Don’t get smart with me. I don’t like smart guys.”
“What, they make you feel dumb?”
I caught another slap for that, one that broke my drunk’s rude awakening and brightened me up enough to take an interest in the speaker.
“You gonna cut out that smart lip?”
I pondered the question, taking advantage of the opportunity to look at the five-foot, three-hundred-pound side of beef standing in my living room. I was thinking maybe I could take the bastard when a tall, cool character came drifting in from the kitchen, eating a salami sandwich and chewing it loudly. “Just cover him, Al, lemme do the talking.”
Of course there would have to be two. Thugs always come in twos in the funny pages. I thought I’d say nothing for a change.
“Nice digs you got here,” the cool one said. He was dark-haired but fair-skinned, with a high Irish forehead and chiseled features. He didn’t look dangerous from a physical standpoint, but the Colt in Al’s hand made me forget about trying to take either of them.
“Glad you like the place,” I said, pressing my fingers to my temples to try to clear my mind of the buzzing sound from either the bourbon or Al’s fist, or both. “Why don’t you make yourself a sandwich or something—you know, make yourself at home.”
“Thanks, I will.”
“Want me to slap him again?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” The cool one had a voice like a lizard licking sandpaper. He slithered onto the other couch, stuffed the last of my salami in his mouth, and put his feet on my coffee table. “So, Itchy—can I call you Itchy?”
“Why not.”
“Right. Why not. I think we have the upper hand here. So, Itchy, you working this Ashley thing or aren’t ya?” He smacked his lips and licked a bit of mustard off a long, pointed index finger.
“Naw, I can’t say I’m working it. Floundering is probably the better term.”
“Ah. Witty.”
“Yeah, real sense of humor this guy’s got,” Al said, waving the Colt in my general direction.
“Al, why don’t you park your Samoan ass.”
Samoan. Of course. Why not a Samoan?
Al sat down heavily in one of my chairs, still within slapping distance.
“See, this is the thing here, Itchy. We don’t want you working, floundering, investigating, nosing around, sniffing about, wishy-washing, dillydallying—you can invent your own word here, if you like. Let’s just say we don’t want you doing anything with this Ashley thing. We think we’re just fine without you.”
“Fine by me,” I said, a little too quickly. “Feel like getting the hell out of my house now?”
“Okay, Al, now you can slap him.”
He did. It was less a slap than what you would call a full-on, closed-fist punch to the eyebrow. I failed to enjoy it.
“I don’t want you to think I don’t like you,” the lizard was lisping when the stars cleared out of my eyes. “I mean, I like you quite a bit. You’ve got spunk. Panache. Je ne sais quoi. And I like your taste in cold cuts. So what I want, and when I say want, I don’t mean want so much as—what’s the word, Al?”
“Order?”
“No, that’s much too harsh. Ah . . . what I . . . require—there we go—what I require is that you go back to bed, get up in the morning, put a steak on that eye of yours, go out to the store, and buy yourself some more of that nice salami. Maybe I’ll pop by next week for a sandwich and we can chat about the weather. Or the ’9ers. Or the price of fucking tea in China.” He stood up and leaned into me, his hot breath inches from my face. “But what we will NOT talk about is a little cunt named Ashley. Because SHE,” he flicked a finger at my eyebrow, which was already beginning to swell, “IS”—flick—“NOT”—flick—“YOUR”—flick—“PROBLEM.”
