Treasure Hunt

“What, though?” And then Hunt squinted. Maybe ninety feet away from where he stood, and still ten feet on this side of the puddle, the smooth flat surface of the mud yielded an instantly recognizable shape, out of place among the smattering of roots and bottles and rotting algae. It looked like two sticks crossed at perfect right angles, but Hunt knew what it was even as he said, “I see it. You mean the tire iron?”

Rand was nodding and nodding, the corners of his mouth turned up in satisfaction. “I’m seein’ that ol’ thing in the mud last night and thinkin’ I be lookin’ at what got used on Dominic.”

14

The headquarters for the Mission Street Coalition’s moving company occupied two large warehouses and an office that was little more than a shed in the light industrial neighborhood a couple of blocks off Cesar Chavez Boulevard between the 101 and 280 freeways.

Mickey, clueless, drove out to the Coalition’s residential home on Dolores, got there at about nine-thirty, then asked around and at the desk for Damien Jones. The administrative bureaucracy at the home wasn’t the most organized system Mickey had ever encountered, and it took him nearly a half hour to hunt down Damien’s likely whereabouts, and he only succeeded then because, inadvertently, he had run into the executive director of the program, Jaime Sanchez, and his wife, Lola.

Identifying himself for what he was, an associate with the Hunt Club, Mickey had explained that Mr. Jones had called the reward hotline number at the office yesterday and apparently had some information relating to the murder of Dominic Como. This seemed to surprise and slightly displease both of the Sanchezes. They couldn’t imagine what that might be or why Damien hadn’t told them first. But nevertheless Mr. Sanchez directed Mickey to the moving company’s headquarters, where he arrived at ten-twenty only to discover that Mr. Jones was out with a moving crew on a job at Forty- second Avenue, almost to the beach, and a good half hour’s drive, or more, from headquarters.

Before he started that drive, though, Mickey took a frustration break and called his sister at the office, giving her the play-by-play of his morning so far, which had produced nothing at all even in the limited realm of eliminating spurious claims to the reward money. “So now I’m off to Forty-second Avenue! Forty-second Avenue! That’s like five blocks before you leave the continent, do you realize that? The way this morning’s going I’m not even going to lay eyes on this Jones guy until noon, and that’s if he’s not on his lunch break someplace else. And all for what? So I can get to meet another Blimp Lady, except this guy’s a guy? This is dumb. Isn’t there somebody else I can check out? Did that girl ever call back? I can check out Damien Jones when he comes back home tonight, if he does. If his name’s even Jones, which now that I think about it, it probably isn’t. Well?”

“Well, what, Mick? Did you ask me a question?”

“I bet I asked you a hundred in there.”

“Try one again. One.”

“Okay. Have we gotten any new calls?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Who? Hang-up Lady?”

“Not her. Not yet. But actually, we’ve gotten three more. The bad news being that they all sound to me like Wyatt’s going to give them to you. If I had to bet.”

“Are they closer than Damien Jones? I mean physically closer? Maybe I can see one of them on the way out to see him. Or all of them.”

“I think maybe you should wait until Wyatt decides, don’t you?”

His sister’s voice of calm reason finally made an impact. Mickey let out a deep sigh into the telephone and said, “Probably.” He took another breath. “Speaking of which, you get any word from him?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. The guy he met this morning? He thinks he might have come up with the murder weapon.”

“Yes!” News of success on any front pumped Mickey right up. “What is it?”

“A tire iron they found in the lagoon. He’s called Devin and they should be over there by now.”

“That is so great,” Mickey said. “Do you think this reward thing might actually work, Sis? Would that be cool, or what?”

“Very cool, Mickey, very cool. But let’s just see what happens. See if the tire iron… I mean if they can tell. And then where it leads, if anywhere. But at least it’s something. Some real evidence. Maybe.”

“Okay,” Mickey said.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I’m motivated again. We’ll keep doing it this way. Meanwhile, what are you doing for lunch?”

She hesitated. “I haven’t really thought about it. I had a huge breakfast, you know, this morning.”

“I remember. But they’ve got this new theory where you can eat two, or even three, meals in one day, and it won’t kill you. In fact, it might even be good for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get something,” she said.

“You’d better. There’ll be a quiz on what it was when I get back.”

Damien Jones, at long last.

Mickey got the strong impression that Damien’s boss wasn’t happy to give him time off for this interview, but Mickey had told him the half-truth that Mr. Sanchez had directed him how to find Mr. Jones, intimating that the big boss himself wanted the interview to proceed.

Now Mickey and Damien had walked a few houses down the street from the move-in job site and were sitting on concrete steps leading up to one of the other houses. Out here, the gray cloud cover was thick, but high enough that it wasn’t quite fog. In spite of that, every few minutes, the deep bass of a foghorn punctuated the early afternoon stillness.

Since Mr. Jones had called with information that seemed to have at least an oblique relevance to the investigation, Mickey found that he had to summon all of his patience as it quickly became obvious that Damien was under the influence of some kind of controlled substance. During the first few questions, trying to establish a rapport with the young workman, it wasn’t even obvious that Damien remembered the substance of his call to the Hunt Club the previous night.

So Mickey gently prodded. “You said something about the fact that the foundation was supposed to pay for your room and board, but now you were paying. And it wasn’t fair.”

“Right. Right.”

“And that Mr. Como didn’t do the same thing at his place. The Sunset Youth Project.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. And that this somehow had something to do with his murder.”

Damien sat on the step with his elbows on his knees, staring straight in front of him, to all appearances stumped. After a minute, he laughed softly to himself, hung his head, and shook it. “Seemed like I had it all worked out last night, but that wasn’t exactly it, what you just said.”

Mickey nodded, all understanding. Although he knew that if this was all he was going to get after the four hours he’d spent tracking this bozo down, he’d be sorely tempted to kill him. Still, he reined himself in and managed to sound sincere. “That’s all right,” he said.

“But that don’t mean it isn’t true.”

Mickey wasn’t clear what antecedent Damien was referring to here and, in fact, was reasonably sure that Damien couldn’t identify it himself. But all he said was, “No, I know.”

“I mean, it’s a racket, you know.”

“What is?”

“The whole, you know, the rehab thing.”

“A racket?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that?”

“Well.” Damien looked up the street, making sure he was still out of earshot. The foghorn sounded, and he continued. “You know, they collecting money from the foundations. Big money.”

Suddenly Mickey felt a chill raise the hairs on his arms. Unbidden, the discussion he’d had with Alicia Thorpe the other day about the Sunset Youth Project’s funding from the city and from other foundations came back to him in sharp detail, particularly her disclosure that the city’s Health Services Department was the biggest single line item in the city’s budget. And now here was Mr. Jones, no relation to Mr. Einstein, referring to the same thing. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything, except for the rather salient fact that Mr. Jones, addled as he might be or might have been last night, somehow was introducing this funding issue into a discussion about Dominic Como’s murder.