Bordoni massaged his neck. “Three. Where’s Marty?”
Danny pointed to the walls. “Where do you think?”
“Oh fucking God.”
“That’s right. Old Marty that nobody knows much about, except maybe you. You know about Governor Warren’s habitual offender law?”
“Uh… no.”
Danny picked up his .45 and holstered it, helped Bordoni to his feet and shoved him into the one chair not soaked red/brown. “The law says any fourth fall costs you twenty to life. No plea bargains, no appeals, nada. You boost a fucking pack of cigarettes, it’s a double dime. So you tell me everything there is to know about you and Marty Goines, or you hang twenty up at Quentin.”
Bordoni flicked his eyes around the room. Danny walked to the curtains, looked out at dark yards and houses and thought of his killer leaving him, clued to a trap by the light burning. He flipped the wall switch; Bordoni let out a long breath. “Really bad for Marty? That the truth?”
Danny could see neon signs on Hollywood Boulevard, miles away. “The worst, so tell me.”
Bordoni talked while Danny looked out at neon and dwindling headlights. “I came out of Quentin two weeks ago, seven out of seven for heists. I knew Marty when he did his turn for reef, and we were buddies. Marty knew I had a parole date, and he knew my sister’s number in Frisco. He’d send me these letters every once in a while after he got out, phony name, no return address, ‘cause he was an absconder and he didn’t want the censors to get a handle on him.
“So Marty calls me at my sister’s five days or so ago, maybe the thirtieth, maybe the thirty-first. He says he’s playing horn for peanuts and hates it, he took the cure, he’s gonna stay off horseback and pull jobs–burglaries. He says he just got together with an old partner and they needed a third man for a housebreak gang. I told him I’d be down in a week or so, and he gave me this address and told me to let myself in. That’s me and Marty.”
Darkness made the room pulsate. Danny said, “What was the partner’s name? Where did Goines know him from?”
“Marty didn’t say.”
“Did he describe him? Was he a partner of Marty’s when he was pulling jobs back in ‘43 and ‘44?”
Bordoni said, “Mister, it was a two-minute conversation, and I didn’t even know Marty pulled jobs back then.”
“Did he mention an old running partner with a burned or scarred face? He’d be mid to late twenties by now.”
“No. Marty was always close-mouthed. I was his only pal at Q, and I was surprised when he said he had an old partner. Marty wasn’t really the partner type.”
Danny shifted gears. “When Goines sent you letters, where were they postmarked and what did they say?”
Bordoni sighed like he was bored; Danny thought of giving him a peek at his old pal’s eyeballs. “Spill, Leo.”
“They were from all over the country, and they were just jive–jazz stuff, wish you were here, the horses, baseball.”
“Did Marty mention other musicians he was playing with?”
Bordoni laughed. “No, and I think he was ashamed to. He was gigging all these Podunk clubs, and all he said was ‘I’m the best trombone they’ve ever seen,’ meaning Marty knew he wasn’t much but these cats he was gigging with were really from hunger.”
“Did he mention anybody at all, other than this old partner you were going to team up with?”
“Nix. Like I told you, it was a two-minute conversation.”
The Miller High Life sign atop the Taft Building blipped off, jarring Danny. “Leo, was Marty Goines a homosexual?”
“Marty! Are you crazy! He wouldn’t even pork nancy boys up at Q!”
“Anybody up there ever make advances to him?”
“Marty would have died before he let some brunser bust his cherry!”
Danny hit the light switch, hauled Bordoni up by his cuff chain and twisted his head so that it was level with a long slash of wall blood. “That’s your friend. That’s why you were never here and you never met me. That’s heat you don’t want, so you just stay frosty and think of this thing as a nightmare.”