Shackles

fight for better than starvation wages; such bosses weren’t above hiring somebody to knock heads when the “wetbacks” and the “greasers” and the “chihuahuas” got out of hand. Another reason for Tucker to pick Vacaville was that the cost of living was relatively low, by California standards these days; and a third was that as long as you didn’t mug old ladies on the street or break up bars on Saturday nights, the local law probably wouldn’t pay any attention to you. It was also possible that Tucker had some reason-contacts, a close friend-for wanting to be close to the prison facility.

It was just one o’clock when I drove into the smallish downtown area. I stopped at a convenience store to ask directions to Poplar Street. It was a few blocks off the main drag-an older residential neighborhood, the sidewalks shaded by big leafy oaks and elms. The private houses were mostly of pre-World War II vintage, but a few newer homes and small apartment complexes had sprung up here and there, none of them particularly aesthetic: weeds in a mossy old garden. The apartment building at number 210 was a two-story, brown stucco affair that looked more like a cut-rate motel. Eight units, four up and four down, all the doors facing the street, the ones on the second level reachable by outside staircases and a long low-railed balcony along the front.

There was an asphalt parking area, just as you’d find at a motel; no trees, no shrubs, no flowers except for some potted plants next to one of the street-level apartments. I put the Toyota into a painted parking slot and went looking for mailboxes. No mailboxes. Each apartment bore a number and each one had a private mail slot. Number 2 downstairs, the one with the potted plants next to it, also bore a neatly hand-printed card in a brass holder: Manager. There was no doorbell, so I banged on the panel a couple of times. Nobody came to see what I wanted.

I turned away with the intention of talking to one of the other residents; there were three cars in the lot besides my rental. No, make that four: a green, low-slung Firebird with a woman at the wheel was just turning in off the street. It skidded into a space next to the Toyota and a round brown Spanish face topped by piles of shiny black hair poked out of the window and said in a gravelly voice with not much accent, “You looking for me?”

“I am if you’re the manager.”

“Hold on a minute.”

She got out of the Firebird in wiggly, puffing movements-a big woman in an orange flowered dress that made her look even bigger. She leaned back in for a bag of groceries, then waddled over to where I waited.

“I’m Mrs. Ruiz,” she said good-naturedly. “If you’re selling something, I don’t want it.” She paused for a beat and then said, “Not that you look much like a salesman.”

“I’m not. I’m looking for one of your neighbors.”

“Which one?”

“Frank Tucker.”

Her mouth got puckery, as if I’d squirted lemon juice along with the name. “Him,” she said. “You a friend of that bum?”

“No. I just want to talk to him.”

“Some kind of cop, right?”

“How did you guess that?”

“Only two kinds want to talk to Frank Tucker-cops and other bums. But you’re too late.”

“Too late?”

“He’s gone. Moved out.”

“When?”

“Couple of weeks ago, like a thief in the night.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Straight to hell, I hope.”

“No forwarding address?”

“Hah!” Mrs. Ruiz said. “He owed two weeks’ rent, the bum. So who do you think takes all the crap from the owner of this place? Me, that’s who. Like it’s my fault Frank Tucker is a bum. My ex- husband warned me, he said ‘Don’t volunteer to be manager, querida, it’s nothing but headaches.’ Well, he was right for once, the only time he was ever right about anything. And I didn’t listen.”

“Can you tell me-”

“The owner’s got some nerve,” she said, still indignant. “I told him in the beginning Frank Tucker was a bum and we shouldn’t rent to him. He said rent to him anyway. I told him Tucker was an ex- convict too, as soon as I found out, but he-”

“How did you find out?”

“What, that he’s an ex-convict? I heard him talking to one of his friends. He was drunk or he wouldn’t have said it so loud.”

“Which prison was he in? The medical facility here?”

“No. Folsom.”

Folsom was a maximum security prison off Highway 50 east of Sacramento, not as well known outside the state as San Quentin but with the same kind of hard-core inmate population. I had helped send a few men to Folsom over the years… Folsom, Folsom. And a slender man in his thirties, with straight brown hair…

I said, “Did he say how long he’d been in Folsom?”

“No.”

“Or when he got out?”

“No.”

“This friend he was talking to-what did he look like?”

“Like a bum,” Mrs. Ruiz said, “what else?”

“Could you describe him?”

“Big, no neck, black curly hair. Forty or so.”

“You happen to catch his name?”

“Dino. That’s an Italian name.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, he looked Italian, that bum.”

“Any idea where he lives?”

“No. I never saw him before or since.”

“Did you ever see Tucker with a man in his thirties, brown hair, average height, slim build?”

“No.”

“Did he ever mention the name Lawrence Jacobs?”

“Not to me. He didn’t talk to me and I didn’t talk to him.”

“Can you give me the names of any of Tucker’s other friends?”

“He kept to himself, mostly,” Mrs. Ruiz said. “I only saw him with one other bum, the day before he moved out.”

“What did that one look like?”

“Fat. Fatter than me and that’s fat.”

I wondered if the fat man had had anything to do with Tucker’s decision to pull up stakes. “Do you know what they talked about?”

“No. The fatty showed up in a big car and went up to Tucker’s apartment and Tucker let him in. I never heard him say a word.”

“So you don’t know his name.”

“No.”

“How long did he stay?”

“Search me. I went out shopping and when I came back, the fatty was gone.”

“The big car he drove-any idea what kind?”

“Cadillac. Cream-colored Seville. ’Eighty-five.” I must have looked a little surprised, because she grinned and said, “I know cars. My ex-husband is an auto mechanic.”

“You didn’t happen to get the license number?”

“No. Now I wish I’d looked.”

“You said Tucker kept mostly to himself-”

“That’s right, he did.”