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“No way. I always kept them apart. My son doesn’t have any links to his father. And don’t go buzzing around him. He’s in college at Stanford.”
I stepped forward. “Anyone who might know where he is, Ms. Thiasson, it would be a help to us. This is a murder case.”
I saw the slightest sign of hesitation. “I’ve lived a good life for twenty years. We’re a family now. I don’t want anyone knowing this came from me.”
I nodded. I felt the blood rushing to my head.
“Frank kept up with Tom Keating. Even when he was locked away. Anyone knows where he is, it’d be him.”
Tom Keating. I knew the name.
He was a retired cop.
Chapter 78
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, Jacobi and I pulled up in front of condo 3A at the Blakesly Residential Community, down the coast in Half Moon Bay.
Keating’s name had stuck in my mind from when I was a kid. He’d been a regular at the Alibi after the nine-to-four shift, where many afternoons I’d been hoisted up on a bar stool by my father. In my mind, Keating had a ruddy complexion and a shock of prematurely white hair. God, I thought, that was almost thirty years ago.
We knocked on the door of Keating’s modest slatted-wood condo. A trim, pleasant-looking woman with gray hair answered.
“Mrs. Keating? I’m Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer of the San Francisco Homicide detail. This is Inspector Jacobi. Is your husband at home?”
“Homicide…?” she said, surprised.
“Just an old case,” I said with a smile.
A voice called from inside, “Helen, I can’t find the damned clicker anywhere.”
“Just a minute, Tom. He’s in the back,” she said as she motioned us into the house.
We walked through the sparsely decorated house and into a sunroom overlooking a small patio. There were several framed police photos on the wall. Keating was as I remembered him, just thirty years older. Gaunt, white hair thinning, but with that same ruddy complexion.
He sat watching an afternoon news show with the stock market tape streaming by. I realized he was sitting in a wheelchair.
Helen Keating introduced us, then, finding the clicker, put the TV volume down. Keating seemed pleased to have visitors from the force.
“I don’t get to many functions since my legs went. Arthritis, they tell me. Brought on by a bullet to lumbar four. Can’t play golf anymore.” He chuckled. “But I can still watch the old pension grow.”
I saw him studying my face. “You’re Marty Boxer’s little girl, aren’t you?”
I smiled. “The Alibi… A couple of five-oh-ones, right, Tom?” A 5-0-1 was the call for backup, and how they used to call a favorite drink, an Irish whiskey with a beer chaser.
“I heard you were quite the big shot these days.” Keating nodded with a toothy smile. “So, what brings you two honchos down to talk to an old street cop?”
“Frank Coombs,” I said.
Keating’s features suddenly turned hard. “What about Frank?”
“We’re trying to find him, Tom. I was told you might know where he is.”
“Why don’t you call his parole officer? That wouldn’t be me.”
“He’s split, Tom. Four weeks now. Quit his job.”
“So they got Homicide following up on parole offenders now?”
I held Keating’s eyes. “What do you say, Tom?”
