Epitaphs

by Bill Pronzini

  Gianna, my name is Tom ... Tom from Fairfax ... my number is 555-2897, I’m home most evenings after six ...

  Two ways to get somebody’s home address when you have nothing more than a telephone number: contact in the telephone company, contact in the police department. I used to know somebody who worked for Pac Bell, but she’d left about a year ago and I hadn’t found anyone else to cultivate. Jack Logan or one of the other cops I knew would trace the number for me—but not today, not yet. Despite my promise to Dominick, I had no real desire to continue poking around in the sad, painful lives of Gianna Fornessi and her grandfather; I’d had enough of la miseria. And it might not be necessary. Gianna might come back home tonight, of her own volition, or the law might locate her in their hunt for Bisconte. No use dipping my oar into it prematurely, was there? Besides, it was a homicide case and that meant I would have to get Harry Craddock’s permission to mount an independent investigation, even though Gianna was not directly involved. Just a formality, the permission, but one that had to be taken care of before I did any work.

  So the hell with it for today. Talk to Craddock in the morning, find out how things stood then, and proceed accordingly.

  THE EVENING WAS A bust too. I called Kerry, to see if she could get away for dinner, and got her machine. Out with Cybil somewhere, apparently. Good for both of them, if not good for me. I hunted through the refrigerator and the sparse items in the pantry, didn’t find anything I wanted to eat. I drank a beer—my second of the day, one more than my usual allotment, but I figured I was entitled—and tried to watch the Braves and Dodgers on TBS. Dull game, or maybe it was the watcher who was dull tonight. I shut it off, put on a Pete Fountain record, got restless listening to all that throbbing New Orleans brass, finally went out and into my car and drove down to the Safeway at Fort Mason. I spent twenty minutes wandering the aisles before I found something I felt like eating that wasn’t fattening—a Weight Watchers frozen lasagna.

  Back home, I tried to read while I ate. Gave that up as a bad idea halfway through the lasagna, which I also gave up as a bad idea; it seemed to have the taste and consistency of the spitballs we used to make when we were kids. A lot of food tasted that way to me lately. I’d read somewhere that there are 9,000 taste buds on the human tongue; that they all die within a twelve-day period and new ones take their place, but that the older you get, the longer it takes for the new taste buds to grow. Maybe the aging process in me was accelerating; maybe mine had died for good. Sic transit gloria buds.

  I decided to take a hot bath. But the plumbing wouldn’t cooperate; it’s old in my building, older than I am and just as cranky sometimes, and tonight it refused to provide enough hot water. I gave the bath up, too, crawled into bed. I was tired enough to get to sleep right away, but just as I was dozing off the telephone rang. A hairy male voice wanted to know if I was Harlow. I said no, not too pleasantly. The voice said, “Stupid schmuck,” as if it were my fault I wasn’t Harlow, and banged the receiver in my ear.

  Perfect end to another perfect day.

  FROM THE OFFICE in the morning I called Harry Craddock. He didn’t sound annoyed to hear from me again so soon, maybe because he thought I was calling to find out if he had a statement ready for me to sign—which he didn’t. Or maybe I’d just caught him on a good day, one in which his workload was not quite as jammed up as usual. In any event, he was willing enough to respond when I started asking questions.

  “Bisconte turn up yet?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Might take longer than I figured. He’s got cash to run on, thanks to Melanie Harris.”

  “Who?”

  “His lady friend. He called her half an hour after you had your run-in with him. Told her where his stash was and to bring it to a bar on the Embarcadero. She did it. Afraid not to; he threatened her.”

  “How much was in the stash?”

  “Couple of thousand, she says.”

  “He didn’t give her any idea where he was planning to go?”

  “None. No ideas of her own either. Says she doesn’t know him real well, only met him three months ago, didn’t have a clue that he was pimping.”

  “She knew him well enough to move in with him,” I said. “Assuming she’s the same one I met at his apartment the other day.”

  “Probably is, but she hadn’t moved in yet. Still has her own apartment in the Marina.” There was a pause, as if Craddock had switched his phone from one ear to the other. In the background I could hear a muted version of the usual squad room racket. “You’re not trying to pump me about Bisconte, are you? For reasons of your own?”

  “Uh-uh. I never horn in on police business.”

  “That’s good. I wouldn’t like it if you did.”

  “It’s Gianna Fornessi I’m interested in,” I said. “She show up last night or this morning?”

  “Not as far as I know. There’s a seal on the door of her flat, we had a Denver boot put on her car just in case, and Ferry has instructions to call us if she contacts him.”

  “Still missing, then. Six days now.”

  “And you want to go looking for her.”

  “If you have no objections.”

  “Still working for her granddad, or is this your own idea?”

  “Still working for him.” Technically, anyway.

  “She your only interest in this business?”

  “One and only.”

  “Okay, then. But if you turn up anything on Bisconte or the Hansen homicide, anything at all, I want to hear about it first thing. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  So I was still in it, like it or not. Gianna, Pietro, and more miseria.

  After Craddock and I disconnected, I rang the Hall of Justice right back and this time asked for Jack Logan. He wasn’t in. But Marty Klein was. Klein was an old pal and former partner of Eberhardt’s and we’d had some friendly dealings in the past, played a little poker now and then.

  I caught him in the right mood too. He agreed to run a check on Tom-from-Fairfax’s telephone number, find out the full name and address of the subscriber for me. Call him back after lunch, he said.

  “How’s Eb doing?” he asked then. “Don’t see much of him anymore.”

  “That makes two of us. He still blames me for his marriage plans falling apart.”

  “Oh,” Klein said, “so that’s what’s behind it.”

  “Behind what?”

  “Him talking about quitting partners with you, maybe opening up his own agency.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Frank Plutarski in the D.A.’s office,” Klein said. “Eb talked to him about it a couple of days ago.”

  “The hell he did.”

  “Don’t tell me he hasn’t said anything about it to you?”

  “He’s made some noises, yeah. But I didn’t know he’d been making them to other people. What exactly did he say to Plutarski?”

  “I’m not sure. Better give Frank a call, ask him yourself.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Probably nothing in it. Just noise, like you said.”

  “Yeah. Just noise.”

  I called the D.A.’s office. Frank Plutarski wasn’t in; he was one of the staff investigators and out on a case. The woman I spoke to said he was expected back late in the day. I asked her to have him call me at home tonight.

  I sat there in the empty office, listening to the ping of the radiator and the faint chatter of sewing machines from the Slim-Taper Shirt Company on the floor below. Just noise, damn it. Just noise. But then, why had Eberardt talked to Frank Plutarski? Only reason I could think of was that he was trying to line up prospective clients for himself, his own agency. Plutarski knew a lot of people in the Bay Area; he’d thrown a little business our way in the past.

  Who else had Eberhardt talked to? Barney Rivera? Try to get Barney to give him Great Western’s free-lance claims investigation business instead of me? Christ, would he stoop that low? I called Great Western. Barney wasn’t in eithe
r. I left the same message for him that I’d left for Frank Plutarski.

  There was a bleak, simmering anger in me now. It built a need to get out of there before Eberhardt showed up, before I suffered claustrophobia or an anxiety attack—legacies of the Deer Run episode that still plagued me in times of stress. I dragged the Yellow Pages out again, started calling automobile dealerships in Colma. Paydirt on the third one I tried, Grissom Dodge Chrysler Plymouth on Serramonte Boulevard: their general manager and vice president was Big Dave Edwards.

  I was on my way in ten seconds. To Colma and Big Dave Edwards, giver of rides.

  Chapter Eleven

  COLMA is A PLACE San Franciscans wouldn’t be caught alive in.

  Local joke, not very funny. Coined because Colma is a community of the dead—a nontown attached to San Francisco’s southern boundary and bordered on its other three sides by Daly City, South San Francisco, and the San Bruno Mountains, where most of the West Bay’s cemeteries are located. Upwards of a dozen different marble orchards, in fact, large and small: Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Catholic, Jewish, nonethnic and nondenominational.

  There isn’t much else in Colma. A few hundred residences for the living, and some scattered business establishments of which most are automobile dealerships stretched out along Serramonte Boulevard. So if a San Franciscan actually does find himself visiting Colma, you can make book that it’s for one of two reasons: to bury or to pay respects at the grave of a friend or loved one, or to buy a car.

  Grissom Dodge Chrysler Plymouth was a medium-size outfit that sold both new and used cars. Emphasis on used, judging from the size and content of their lots and showroom. When I got there I was told that Big Dave Edwards was in conference with a customer. So while I waited I wandered around the showroom, looking at the new models. Be nice if I could afford one, maybe a Dodge Shadow or Colt—something small, economical. My car was twenty years old, had 147,000 miles on it, and used gas and oil as if it were leased out by OPEC. Not this year, though; the investigations business wasn’t that profitable. Maybe next year.

  But probably not.

  I had been there fifteen minutes when Edwards put in an appearance. He homed in on me instantly—I was the only nonemployee on the floor, so he couldn’t miss—and pumped my hand while we traded names. Ashley Hansen’s Big Dave, all right; same faintly smarmy voice I’d heard on her telephone tape. I asked if we could talk in private, and he said, “Sure thing,” and clapped me on the shoulder and ushered me into his private office, crowding me all the way. He was that kind of salesman: aggressive, overfriendly, mock-complaisant. He could get away with it, too, because he was three or four inches over six feet, weighed a good two-thirty, most of it paunch, and had a smooth, baby-pink face and a winning smile. Everything about him said he was a sweetheart of a guy, born to serve. Everything except his eyes. They were shrewd, calculating, and feral—a con man’s eyes. If I’d had a daughter of any age, I would not have trusted her alone with Big Dave for five minutes.

  We sat down and he said, “Well now, what can we do for you? New Chrysler, maybe? Terrific buy on a LeBaron, you won’t find a better deal anywhere. Just tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll do my best to fix you up.”

  “Gianna Fornessi,” I said.

  “... How’s that again?”

  “I’m looking for Gianna Fornessi. Ashley Hansen’s roommate.”

  He didn’t ruffle easily; men who are all facade seldom do. His smile stayed in place, with only a little congealing at the edges. “Don’t think I know either of those folks,” he said.

  “You read this morning’s paper, Mr. Edwards?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Then you don’t know that Ashley Hansen was murdered yesterday.”

  This time the smile slipped, went crooked; he had to work to get it back in place. “Murdered?”

  “In her apartment. By Jack Bisconte, apparently.”

  Nothing from Edwards.

  “You know him?” I asked. “Bisconte?”

  “No.”

  “Ashley Hansen’s pimp.”

  There was a wooden box on Edwards’s desk, Oriental-looking, with an intricate inlaid design; he popped it open, took out a cigarette, lit it with a gold lighter. His hands were steady. He took three deep drags, watching me through the exhaled smoke, before he spoke again.

  “Who are you?” he said. “Not a cop, or you’d have said so.”

  “Private investigator.”

  “Some kind of shakedown, is that it?”

  “You watch too much television, Mr. Edwards.”

  “Yeah? Then what do you want?”

  “Information.”

  “About what?”

  “Gianna Fornessi. I told you, I’m looking for her.”

  “Why come to me? I don’t know her.”

  “You knew Ashley Hansen.”

  “Did I? How do you figure that?”

  “Message you left on her answering machine, yesterday or the day before. Asking for a date tonight. Offering her rides.”

  “Message with my name in it? I don’t think so.”

  “Big Dave from Colma.”

  “Lots of Big Daves in the world,” he said.

  “Come on, Edwards. If I can track you down, the police can track you down. You want them to show up here?”

  No reply.

  “You’re wearing a wedding ring,” I said. “You want your wife to find out you’ve been seeing a call girl?”

  “That a threat?”

  “I don’t make threats. I’m just telling you that things can get nasty if you let them.”

  He smoked the rest of his coffin nail in silence, thinking about it. When he crushed out the butt he said, “Why’d this guy Bisconte kill Ashley?”

  “The police don’t know yet. Some kind of argument, maybe.”

  “What a waste,” Edwards said. He shook his head. “Best fuck I ever had.”

  “Is that all you’ve got to say about her?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “You don’t seem to care much that she’s dead.”

  “She was a whore,” he said, and shrugged.

  I’d disliked him on sight; I disliked him a whole lot now, to the point where I would have enjoyed mating my fist with his baby-pink face. Some of what I was feeling must have showed in my face, because for the first time cracks showed in his facade, began to ooze worry.

  “All right,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can tell you. I don’t know anything about Ashley getting killed and I don’t know where you can find Gianna. I never made it with her. I only met her once and that was three months ago.”

  “Ashley talk much about her?”

  “No. Hell, you think I paid her two bills a pop to talk?”

  “So you don’t know any of Gianna’s johns.”

  “No.”

  “Any of Ashley’s other johns?”

  “No. None of my business.”

  “The term ‘Old Cocksman’ mean anything to you?”

  Shrug. “Why should it?”

  “The time you met Gianna—where?”

  “Her place, hers and Ashley’s.”

  “North Beach. Upper Chestnut.”

  “Yeah. Ashley brought her car in that day for some repair work—I made a deal with her to take it out in trade. So she needed a ride, so I rode her and then I rode her home.” He grinned at me, saw the look on my face, and wiped the grin off his fat mouth. His eyes shifted away from mine; he busied himself lighting another weed.

  I said, “Gianna was there when you brought Ashley home?”

  “Out front, yeah. Just getting home herself.”

  “You talk to her?”

  “No. Ashley said she was her roommate, that’s all.”

  “Was Gianna alone?”

  “With a guy.”

  “I don’t suppose Ashley identified him.”

  “Hell no.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I only got a glimpse. He didn’t g
et out of his truck.”

  “Truck?”

  “Pickup. Ford Ranger. ‘Ninety, I think.”

  “What color?”

  “Blue.”

  “Give me an idea of the man. Anything you can remember.”

  “Dark, like you. Not too old—thirties.”

  “Black hair? Thick, curly?”

  “Think so. What I could see of it under his hat.”

  “What kind of hat?”

  “Cowboy hat,” Edwards said. “Big Stetson.”

  The guy who had been giving Melanie Harris a hard time on Tuesday afternoon, who’d been looking for Jack Bisconte. Connection—but how far did it go?

  I got to my feet. Edwards squinted at me through a haze of smoke. “That it?” he said.

  “That’s it.”

  “Not too painful after all.” Some of the jaunty arrogance was back; his ass and his bank account were secure again. I pitied the woman he was married to, any woman who would hook up with a man like Big Dave Edwards. “Do me a favor, okay? You ever want to buy a car, go someplace else. Don’t come here.”

  “Count on it,” I said.

  I STOPPED AT A service station two blocks from Grissom Dodge Chrysler Plymouth and checked the San Francisco White Pages. There was no listing for Melanie Harris, but among the several M. Harrises was one with a Marina address, on Cervantes Boulevard. I rang the number; no answer. It was unlikely that she would still be at Bisconte’s flat, given what Harry Craddock had told me, but I looked up the number and tried it. No answer there either.

  I drove back into the city, ate a light lunch at a place on Van Ness, and then went up to the office. Empty; and as far as I could tell, Eberhardt hadn’t been in at all today. I made short work of mail and messages, rang up the Hall of Justice. Marty Klein was at his desk in General Works, and he’d done the Fairfax telephone trace for me.