If Angels Fall (23 page)

“Like your old man. You mean.”

“Yeah. I mean, my biological clock is ticking down and
I still want to get married, have kids. But it’s just that when my dad was
murdered, I vowed to be a cop and now I am one. I can’t give it up.”

They left it at that as they rolled into SoMa, South
of Market.

“They used to call this ‘south of the slot’ for the
cable car line that ran through here.” Sydowski said.

“You’re betraying your age, Walt.”

“Used to be a helluva neighborhood.”

SoMa was now the realm of machine shops, warehouses,
Vietnamese restaurants, and gay bars. Latinos who fled Central America’s
bloodbaths made their home here in decaying tenement houses, which were the
quarry of visionary developers who bitched over cell phones about San
Francisco’s sunshine codes and zoning laws. Red tape kept SoMa on life support.
They wanted to pronounce last rites.

Kindhart’s building had risen from the rubble of the
1906 quake and fire, a small hotel that evolved into a bordello, a shooting
gallery, then a fleabag apartment complex. All it offered now was a view of the
James Lick Skyway, Interstate 80, the Bay Bridge, and Oakland.

Sydowski and Turgeon climbed the creaking stairs to
the creaking stairs to the third floor and pounded on Kindhart’s door. It was
5:45 a.m. No answer. Sydowski pounded again, harder.

“Mr. Kindhart?” he called loudly.

Sydowski continued pounding. Down the hall a door
opened, and a one-armed man stepped from his apartment.

“Knock off that shit,” he growled.

Sydowski flashed his shield. “Mind your own business.”

“Fucking pigs.” The man’s door slammed.

Sydowski resumed pounding.

“Who the fuck is it?” a deep voice snarled from
Kindhart’s unit.

“Police, Mr. Kindhart, we’d like to talk to you.”

“Fuck off. I won’t talk to you.”

“We’re investigating a case. Won’t look good if you
refuse to cooperate, Mr. Kindhart.”

There came a string of unintelligible cursing, a
mattress squeaked, empty bottles clinked, then more cursing, locks were
rattled, and the door opened. Shirtless, unshaven, torn Levi’s yielding to his
pot belly. He held the door defensively, reeking of alcohol, assessing
Sydowski, then Turgeon.

“May we come in?” Sydowski said. “We’d like to talk to
you.”

“What about?” One of Kindhart’s lower front teeth was
missing, the survivors were rotting.

“Franklin Wallace,” Turgeon said.

“Franklin Wallace?” Kindhart scratch his whiskers.
“Franklin Wallace?”

“Prison. Virginia. Think hard,” Sydowski said.

Lying was futile. Kinhart surrendered his door, went
to the kitchen of his studio apartment, put on a kettle for coffee, sat at his
tiny kitchen table, and lit a Lucky Strike.

“Hurry it up, I gotta go to work.” He exhaled, rubbing
his eyes.

Turgeon looked around. Sydowski joined Kindhart at the
table.

“What kind of job you have, Perry?”

“You know the fucking answer to that. So why are you
here?”

A handful of pornographic magazines dropped on the
tabletop contained color pictures of naked children in obscene posses with men.

“This is a violation of your parole.” Turgeon said.

“That’s unlawful seizure, I know my fucking rights,
hon.”

“You have rights.” Sydowski casually slipped on his
bifocals, wet his thumb, and flipped through his notebook. “You’re a
carpenter’s apprentice at Hunters Point, Perry?”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“Work with lots of other guys, family men with
children.”

Sydowski turned to Turgeon. I think they’d understand
the term ‘predatory pedophile,’ don’t you, Inspector?”

“We could always show them picture of one.”

Sydowski smiled.

Kindhart’s kettle piped. He made black coffee for
himself only.

“Tell us about the last time you saw Wallace,”
Sydowski said.

“Why should I? You’re just going to report me.”

“We are going to report you, but whether we tell the
judge you helped us with our investigation, or obstructed it, is up to you.”

Kindhart squinted through a pull of smoke and slurped
his coffee. “I shared a cell with Wallace in Virginia and looked him up when I
got here. Being a Sunday school teacher he was plugged in, figured he could
help me get a job. I saved his ass inside. He owed me.”

“A real job, or something in the trade?” Turgeon said

“Look, I just take pictures, that’s all I do.”

“What about the three cousins, the little girl in
Richmond, Virginia?” Turgeon said

“I just took pictures. They wanted me to.”

“And the two five-year-old girls last year in the Mission?”

“I told you I just take pictures when they want me to.
They love to have their pictures taken. I don’t date them like Wallace did. I
don’t know anything about that shit with that little Donner girl last year and
why he offed himself. I had nothing to do with it.”

“We never suggested you did.” Sydowski said.

“Right. Like I don’t know why you’re here.” Kindhart
shook his head. “Ever since that boy got grabbed, it’s been all over the news again.
I just take pictures, that’s all I do. I don’t date them.” Kindhart dragged
hard on his cigarette, then pounded the magazines with his forefinger.
“Besides, they’re all little prostitutes anyway. They know exactly what they’re
doing. Always coming to the people who know. Wallace and his friend had
terrific insights into them.”

“What’s his friend’s name?” Sydowski asked.

Kindhart shook his head and took a pull from his
cigarette. “Only met him once out twice. I think he was from Montana or North
Dakota. Some far-off place like that.”

“Describe him.”

“Describe him.”

“Race?”

“White. A white guy.”

“Height.”

“Just under six, average.’

“Age?”

“Late forties, I’d say.”

“Anything specific you remember about him?”

“No...” Kindhart stubbed out his cigarette. “Yeah.
Tattoos. He had tattoos. Snake and fire, or something, here.” Kindhart brushed
his forearms.

“Where does he live? Where does he work?” Sydowski
said

“Don’t know.”

“How did you know him?”

“Through Wallace. He was Wallace’s friend.”

“He do time in Virginia, too?”

“I don’t remember him, but he was a con.”

“How do you know?”

“Walked the walk. Talked the talk.”

“Where’d he do the time?”

Kindhart shrugged.

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Bookstore off Romolo. I was there with Wallace when
he came in and started talking.”

“He like to date children?”

“Wallace said he did.”

“Ever take his picture while he was on a date?”

“No fucking way. I hardly knew the guy.”

Sydowski dropped a print of the Polaroid showing
Tanita Marie Donner sitting in the lap of the hooded man with the tattoos.
“Who’s that man?” Sydowski asked.

Kindhart picked it up. Examined it, then put it down.
“That’s Wallace’s friend.”

“How do you know?”

“The tattoos.”

“Who took the snapshot?”

Kindhart shrugged.”

“You used a Polaroid last year with little girls in
the Mission, didn’t you, Perry?”

Kindhart didn’t remember.

“Tell you what”-Sydowski closed his notebook and
smiled-“you better come over to the Hall with us while we get a warrant to tidy
up your place here.”

“I told you I had nothing to do with Wallace and that
girl.”

I’m sure you’re being truthful and won’t mind telling
us again after we wire you to a polygraph?”

“A fucking lie-detector?”

“you have a problem with that, Perry?” Sydowski asked.

“I want to call my lawyer.”

Sydowski slowly folded his glasses, tucked them into
his breast pocket, and stood. “You know what I find interesting?” He towered
over Kindhart. “I find it interesting how an innocent man with nothing to hide
never thinks of calling a lawyer. Now why would you need a lawyer, Perry?”

He didn’t answer.

Sydowski leaned down and whispered into his ear: “Did Tanita
Marie Donner get to call a lawyer?”

Kindhart said nothing.

“Did Danny Raphael Becker get to call a lawyer,
Perry?”

Sydowski clamped his massive hand firmly around the
back of Kindhart’s neck and squeezed until it started hurting.

“Don’t worry, v
oychik
. You can talk to your
lawyer about the big bad SFPD and your right to prey on children. And I’ll talk
to the construction workers at Hunters Point about baby fuckers, skinners, and
all around pieces of shit. Sound good?”

The gold in Sydowski’s teeth glinted as he smiled.
“Good. Now, if you don’t mind. I think we should be on our way.”

BOY’S ABDUCTION HAUNTS MOTHER OF KIDNAPPED-MURDERED
BABY GIRL.

The head of
The San Francisco Star’s
lead item
skylined above the fold across six columns, over a four-column color shot of
Angela Donner in Tanita Marie’s room, hugging a teddy bear. A large familiar
poster of Tanita dominated the background with REWARD emblazoned above Tanita’s
face. “Murder” was, by chance, at Angela’s eye level. Photos of Tanita and
Danny Becker accompanied the story by Tom Reed. It began:

Angela Donner can’t stop her tears as she hugs her
dead child’s teddy bear and prays for Danny Becker who was abducted in the same
area where her daughter Tanita Marie was kidnapped and later murdered a year
ago.

“I pray Danny Becker will come home alive, that his
mom and dad won’t have to go through what I’ve gone through, and live with
every day. And I pray my baby’s murderer is brought to justice.” Angela, 21,
cries softly in the first interview she’s given since her two-year-old
daughter’s slaying shocked The City...

Not bad, Reed thought, taking a hit of coffee at his
desk in the newsroom after reading his package of stories. His lead piece
turned to page two and keyed to his feature on Martin’s group, the anchor piece
on the front of the Metro section.

He had beaten both the
Chronicle
and
Examiner
.
Mixed with the satisfaction of scooping the competition and owning today’s
Star
was Reed’s sympathy for Angela Donner. She was an obese, homely young woman who
kept apologizing for her home, a dilapidated apartment permeated with a pungent
odor. Her father was in his chair before a General Electric fan that oscillated
atop a TV supported by a wooden fruit crate. He was shrouded in a white
bedsheet. From time to time, his wrinkled hand would slither from under it to
gather ice chips from a plastic bowl. His skeletal jaw worked slowly on the
ice.

“Earth to Tom. Did you hear me?”

“Sorry. What?” Reed looked up from his paper and over
his computer terminal at Molly Wilson, typing feverishly.

“I said, how much longer are you going to admire your
work? You’re worse than a summer cub with journalistic narcissism.”

All morning, Reed had accepted compliments on his
stories.

“You know,” Wilson said, “I half expect you to start
dusting your awards and telling me about your glory days.”

“This is how it is with us old guys, Molly. It’s rare
for us to get it up. But when we do, the sensation is indescribable.”

Wilson halted her typing. “I wouldn’t know, Tom.”

Reed turned to the Metro section and the feature on
Martin’s group. Whatever was happening here with Wilson did not sit right. What
did she want? A relationship? Sex? It didn’t matter. “Ann and I are trying to
get back together.”