compromised. A little bullshit about CIs, pending search warrants, and means and methods. Judges like that kind of crap. It makes them feel important. And I’ll get the DA to lean on the judge for a gag order if it looks like the case might break open. Judges like that, too, since it makes them the center of the media coverage. Nobody gets to talk except them.”
Chapter 47
John Porzolkiewski wasn’t paying attention when the chubby Hispanic in the outdated brown sports coat walked into his Tenderloin store. His eyes darted back and forth between the two homeless men huddled by the beer display cooler on the opposite wall and the three high school girls giggling at the latest issue of Penis Envy at the front of the porn-lite magazine rack.
He still wasn’t paying attention when the Hispanic man stopped in front of the counter behind which he was standing, when he pulled a single piece of paper out of a leather folder, and when two uniformed officers stationed themselves by the front door.
The words, “I’m Lieutenant Pacheco of SFPD. I have a warrant to search your store,” finally broke through the auto-pilot haze of decades running a skid-row market.
Porzolkiewski reached out to accept the paper from Spike’s hand. He spotted the words “Search Warrant” in bold letters on the top, then shook his head and looked up.
“Busting my place apart because of some health code violation? What do you expect to find, plague?”
Porzolkiewski’s eyes locked on a spot past Spike’s left shoulder, then he threw his arm forward, jabbing his finger at the homeless men.
“Put that back and get out of here.”
Spike glanced over and spotted the top of a silver and black King Cobra forty-ouncer protruding from a grimy army-jacketed armpit. The two patrol officers grabbed the homeless men, patted them down, removed four cans of malt liquor from their coat pockets, and pushed them out the door. Spike pointed at the girls, then toward the entrance. They slipped the magazine onto the rack, and slinked past him and out to the street.
Porzolkiewski was staring down at the search warrant when Spike turned back, his hands shaking and his eyebrows furrowed on what seemed to Spike to be a permanently sad face.
“I need you to keep your hands in view and come around the counter,” Spike told him.
Porzolkiewski backed up a half step, then glanced under the countertop.
Spike pulled his coat back and rested his hand on the butt of his semiautomatic.
“It’s not that,” Porzolkiewski said. He bent down, reaching under the counter.
Spike yanked out his gun. A double-handed grip aimed it at Porzolkiewski’s forehead.
“Don’t do it.”
Porzolkiewski looked up at the barrel just inches away, then toward Spike’s face.
“What are you doing? It’s not like I killed someone.”
“It’s exactly like you killed someone.” Spike jerked the gun up an inch. “Back away.”
Porzolkiewski straightened and stepped back. Spike skirted the counter, spun Porzolkiewski around, and pushed him up against the condom and hard liquor shelves. He reholstered his gun and snapped on handcuffs. He then gripped the chain linking the two cuffs with one hand, grabbed the back of Porzolkiewski’s shirt collar with the other, and guided him around the counter toward the door. A uniformed officer waiting on the sidewalk took Porzolkiewski by the arms, leaned him over the hood of a patrol car, and patted him down.
Spike pointed at one of the patrol officers waiting in the store to execute the search warrant and said, “Check for a gun under the counter.”
The officer crouched down, grunting as he moved items around on the two shelves.
A woman entered wearing a white disposable hazmat suit and pushing a cart bearing a portable chemical vapor detector. Black rubber boots encased her feet and neoprene gloves protected her hands. She breathed through a respirator attached to the plastic face shield of her hood.
Spike watched Porzolkiewski struggle against the handcuffs as the woman came to a stop in front of the cash register.
The officer stepped back.
“No gun, Lieutenant.”
“Then what the…”
The officer reached down and pulled out a box. “This.” He tilted it toward Spike.
Spike shook his head. “I nearly shot this guy over a Siamese kitten. What is it about these psychos? Poison two men to death, then almost give it up over some pound-worthy animal. It’s like some 1950s B-movie.”
He nodded at the woman, then said to the patrol officer:
“Let’s get out of here and let her do her work.”
Chapter 48
Gage wasn’t surprised he didn’t recognize the deputy on the other side of the bulletproof window on the seventh floor of the Hall of Justice. It had been over twenty years since Gage had been a regular visitor booking murderers into the jail. And like a snake that sheds its skin, it was almost a new sheriff’s department. Only a few from Gage’s generation were left, now in the upper ranks.
The deputy accepted Gage’s PI license as a ticket inside, then activated the locks on the barred gate and the sliding metal door.
Gage stepped into the hallway and signed in on the visitor’s log. He heard a baritone voice call out his name from behind the booking counter to his left. He looked over to find its source: a sixty-year-old freckled face below a bald head. It was a sergeant from the old days, now wearing a captain’s insignias.
Gage walked over and stuck out his hand.
“I used to know a guy who sort of looked like you,” Gage said. “We called him Red, but I don’t see the red anymore.”
Red shook his hand and smiled. “Your day will come. You ain’t gonna keep all that hair forever.”
Red glanced at the sign-in sheet across the hallway, and asked, “Who you here to see?”
“John Porzolkiewski.”
“The poison guy?”
Gage nodded.
“Weird dude.”
“Weird dude?” Gage laughed. “Haven’t you been out of this place in the last thirty years? No one says ‘weird dude’ anymore. That went out with ‘put a cap in his ass’ and ‘what’s up bro.’ ”
“Okay, forget the dude part. He’s still weird. He didn’t say peep other than ‘I want my phone call’ after Spike hooked him up at his market. He never even invoked. Spike says he read him his rights and the guy just stared back like a beached whale.”
Gage looked down the hallway through a gate separating the visiting rooms from the rows of cells facing each other fifty feet away. He could see hands and forearms extending from the cells, some resting on flat cross pieces, others gesturing. Mostly brown and black. A staccato of hard voices, knife-sharp cackles, and assaulting laughs reverberated against the concrete and steel.
“He’s not in main line.” Red jerked his thumb toward the other end of the hallway. “We put him on suicide watch last night.”
“You have a shrink talk to him?”
Red shook his head. “No point if he’s not gonna talk back.”
“I didn’t do it,” Porzolkiewski said, just as Gage crossed the threshold into the interview room.
“Then what were you doing with a pound of sodium monofluoroacetate in your storeroom?” Gage pulled back a plastic chair and sat down across the table from him. “That’s enough to kill everyone who works at TIMCO.”
