Epitaphs

by Bill Pronzini

  “Sex,” he said. “I wanted sex.”

  “Either way, it’s not a mortal sin.”

  “Isn’t it? A lot of people think it is.”

  “And a lot of people don’t.”

  “But a prostitute, a call girl ... I must have been crazy. I’ve never been with a prostitute in my life.”

  “All right,” I said. “Who gave you Gianna Fornessi’s name and telephone number?”

  “... I can’t tell you that.”

  “Concealing information that may have bearing on a homicide case is a felony, Mr. Duchaine.”

  “Homicide ...” He shuddered. “What happened to her roommate?”

  “Ashley Hansen,” I said. “There was a struggle of some kind and she died of a blow to the head.”

  “Do the police know who did it?”

  “They think it was Jack Bisconte.”

  No reaction.

  “Name’s not familiar to you?”

  “Bisconte? No.”

  “Gianna Fornessi’s pimp. Ashley Hansen’s pimp.”

  Headshake.

  “Who’s Dick from San Rafael?” I asked him.

  “How did ... oh. The message I left.”

  “Who is he? One of Gianna’s johns?”

  “Johns?”

  “Customers.”

  “I ... yes. But he’s married, he has children....”

  “Friend of yours? Close friend?”

  “Just someone I know. A business acquaintance.”

  “And over lunch or drinks you happened to mention to him how lonely you are and he told you about Gianna. That how it was?”

  “Not exactly, but ... something like that.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “I just ... I don’t know if—”

  “His last name. Don’t make me call the police.”

  Three-beat. “Morris,” Duchaine said miserably. “Dick Morris.”

  “He lives in San Rafael?”

  “I think so.... My God, you won’t say anything in front of his family?”

  “Not if I can help it. The address, Mr. Duchaine.”

  “I don’t have it. I’ve never been to his home.”

  “His place of business, then. Where does he work?”

  “Jeffcoat Electric.”

  “Which is where?”

  “San Rafael. On Lincoln Boulevard. He’s their sales manager. He ... I’ve known him for years, casually. I buy a fair amount from Jeffcoat ... I have a small manufacturing company and they ... Dick is ...” The jumble of words seemed to congeal in his throat; he swallowed them down.

  “Is Dick Morris the only person you know who bought Gianna’s services?”

  “The only one, yes.”

  “Did he mention anyone else, any friends of his?”

  “I don’t ... no, I don’t think so.”

  There was nothing more he could tell me; I had bled it all out of him. I left him sitting there with his head bowed and his eyes shut, shaken and oppressed—another case of la miseria. I felt bad for him, bad about having had to push my way into his sad, empty life. And yet all I’d done was confront him with his own weakness and vulnerability. There really wasn’t anything immoral in being lonely and needing a little love, even if it was the kind that cost a couple of hundred bucks an hour. Thomas Duchaine had had to convince himself of that before he was able to telephone Gianna Fornessi; now he had unconvinced himself of it, probably once and for all. In any case, he kept on suffering. He had been wearing a crown of thorns for some time now and he would go right on wearing it.

  The things we do to ourselves, I thought as I let myself out. They’re as bad as the things we do to others, and sometimes even worse.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE HUB OF NORTH BEACH is the intersection of Broadway and Columbus. That is also the hub of San Francisco’s modern Barbary Coast, where the city’s more notorious nightclubs and sin palaces are located. Topless, bottomless; female impersonators; jazz, heavy metal, reggae, rap, musical revues, comedy shows. Fun and frolic in a sea of booze and babel and blazing neon. The tourist brochures tell you about that side of the Silicone Alley strip; the side they don’t tell you about is the wide-open drug dealing and flesh peddling; the pickpockets and muggers, the roving gangs of kids looking for action and trouble, the aggressive panhandlers and belligerent drunks, the unstable mental patients turned loose on the streets by the closure of most of the city’s outpatient psychiatric clinics. You can find fun and frolic on the North Beach strip, all right, but you can also find several different qualities of hurt. I have enough hurt to deal with during the daylight hours; I don’t go to Broadway and Columbus at night unless I have to.

  This was a weeknight, so the crowds were not as heavy or as unruly as they are on Friday and Saturday. Even so, and even though it was just a little past seven-thirty when I got to North Beach, the Portsmouth Square Garage was already full. I had to park on the street in the deserted Financial District and hoof it a dozen blocks to Broadway.

  As early as it was, most of the clubs seemed to be moderately crowded and the Top Cat was no exception. Outside was a billboard advertising the current attraction, a heavy-metal rock group called The Fat. Inside, the noise level was on a par with a couple of jet planes taking off: people thumping and gyrating on the dance floor, people clapping and smacking tables, and up on the stage, five scruffily dressed, obese white males with hair and beards dyed different colors, abusing piano and drums and electric guitars to create a sound like cats being tortured in an echo chamber. Their combined weight must have been about a ton. The five of them, jiggling and bouncing and sweating greasily, was the best advertisement for a crash weight-loss program I’d ever seen.

  All the tables surrounding the stage and dance floor were taken, but the bar area was less crowded. The bar itself was L-shaped, with one bartender working each section of the L. Both bartenders were women and both wore tuxedo outfits with little black hats that were supposed to simulate cat ears. Cute. Cuter than The Fat, anyway. The portion of the L farthest from the stage was Melanie Harris’s domain. There was one empty stool at the very end, next to the wall; I wedged in there and parked my hams on it.

  Melanie was busy; it took her the better part of ten minutes to get around to me. Which was all right, because I would have had difficulty trying to talk to her above the din. As it was, The Fat quit their dissonant caterwauling just before she moved my way, and a gross, wheezing voice boomed out that they were taking a ten-minute break. Thank you, Lord, I thought.

  “What’ll you have?” Melanie, in a voice only a couple of decibels above normal.

  I said, “Remember me?”

  She rolled her eyes; she’d heard that one several hundred times before. “Not too likely, gramps. I’m busy, okay? What’ll you have?”

  “Bud Lite.”

  She got a bottle out of the cooler, banged it and a glass down in front of me. “Five,” she said.

  “Dollars?”

  “No, Japanese yen. What do you think? Somebody’s got to pay for the entertainment.”

  What entertainment? I thought. I laid a ten on the bartop. “I wasn’t giving you a line a minute ago. The other day, up at Jack Bisconte’s place. The guy who was hassling you—I chased him off. Remember?”

  She looked at me, actually saw me, for the first time. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “But that doesn’t buy you any grateful favors.”

  “I’m not trying to buy any favors. Not the kind you mean.”

  “No, huh? Well, I don’t know where he is, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “Who?”

  “Jack. He can drop dead for all I care.”

  “I’m not looking for Bisconte.”

  “So I’m wrong twice? All right, what are you after?”

  “The guy who was hassling you. The cowboy.”

  “What do you want with that asshole?”

  “Personal matter.”

  “Yeah? Who are you anyway?”

  “Does th
at make a difference?”

  “It might.” She leaned closer. “Cop?”

  “No.”

  “You sure look like one.”

  “I can’t help the way I look,” I said. “You know the cowboy, right? His name, where I can find him?”

  She shrugged, a gesture that made her cat ears twitch. “I don’t want anything to do with him,” she said. “I don’t like his type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “Rough trade. I don’t play those games.”

  “What games?”

  “S&M bullshit.”

  Somebody from down the bar called loudly, “Hey, sweets, you work here or what? I need a fresh drink.”

  She called back, “Yeah, yeah, hold your horses,” and then muttered under her breath, “Assholes galore.” She moved away, taking my sawbuck with her—taking her time.

  I waited, nibbling on the five-buck Bud Light, fidgeting a little. It was smoky in there—cigarettes, cigars, grass—and the smoke was irritating my lungs. Fresh air was what I wanted. And home, my flat, where it was quiet and Fat-free.

  Melanie served three customers, put up orders for two topless waitresses in kitty costumes. Back to me then, with my change—five singles. I pushed them back her way, all five of them.

  She gave me a look. “What’s that for?”

  “The cowboy’s name and where I can find him.”

  “Oh, hell,” she said, and made the bills disappear. “Chet. His name’s Chet.”

  “Last name?”

  “Who knows? Chet’s the only one I ever heard.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I think out in Bolinas.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “Well, Jack took me to a party out there once, a couple of months ago. This Chet acted like he owned the place, so I guess maybe he did.”

  “You wouldn’t remember the address?”

  “Who remembers addresses? I was only there once.”

  “The name of the street?”

  “Main drag, I guess. Whatever that’s called.”

  “His place is right downtown?”

  “A little ways beyond the stores. Not too far.”

  “Anything distinctive about the house?”

  “It wasn’t a house,” Melanie said.

  “What is it, then?”

  “Kind of a cottage. You know, a beach cottage.”

  “On the lagoon there?”

  “On the water, yeah. Behind a fence that runs along the edge of the street.”

  “Anything else about the cottage? Size, color, shape?”

  “Well, it was pink,” she said.

  “Pink.”

  “Real pink. Like a fag would have.”

  “Is Chet a homosexual?”

  “I doubt it,” she said, wry-mouthed.

  “What kind of party was it?”

  “Just a party. At first, anyhow.”

  “What happened?”

  “Things started to get kinky.”

  “Kinky how?”

  She leaned close again. “Chet wanted to put on a show. D&S for starters. One of the other girls was stoned and willing to do the slave bit. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what he was trying to promote.”

  “Orgy?”

  “The S&M kind—whips and chains, probably. I don’t go for that crap. I like my sex one-on-one. I told Jack, if he knew what was good for him he’d take me out of there, fast.”

  “Did he?”

  “Sure he did. He knew what was good for him.”

  “He ever try to talk you into anything himself?”

  “D&S, S&M? No.”

  “How about turning tricks?”

  The wry mouth again. “You know about those bimbos he had up on Chestnut, huh? What happened to the one yesterday.” I nodded. “Yeah, well, he never tried to turn me out. If he had I’d have fixed his wagon. I’m no whore. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him if I’d known he was pimping.”

  “I believe you, Melanie.”

  “I don’t care if you do or not. It’s the truth.”

  “This Chet character,” I said. “You think Bisconte was procuring for him?”

  Another of the waitresses called to Melanie from the slot farther down. Melanie straightened, hesitated, then yelled that she’d be right there. To me she said, “How should I know what Jack was doing for Chet?”

  “I’m just asking your opinion. Could their relationship be that kind—business? Or would you say they’re friends?”

  “Not friends,” she said, “at least not close friends. Chet never called or came around Jack’s while I was there.”

  “Why did he want to see Bisconte the other day? What was he so exercised about?”

  “Who knows? He didn’t tell me. Listen, I don’t care about Chet any more than I care about Jack, okay? I don’t want anything more to do with either of them. I got enough assholes smelling up my life.”

  There was a sudden shrill, vibrating shriek that set my teeth on edge. Microphone feedback? No: electric guitar. The Fat was back, and with a vengeance. The shriek rose to a screaming pitch, was joined by other shrieks—more poor felines being brutalized in the echo chamber.

  Melanie mouthed something that might have been, “Thanks for the five bucks,” and then made a shooing gesture to indicate our discussion was finished. It would have been finished in any case, thanks to The Fat. They had begun to sing something that had the words “love” and “crazybone” and “death’s door” in it, while they continued abusing their instruments and the crowd roared and stomped its pagan approval.

  I got the hell out of there.

  i HAD A SURPRISE VISITOR waiting for me when I got home. Sitting in a dark-colored Caddy smack in front of my building, on the passenger side with the window rolled down. He hailed me as I came walking toward him—I’d had to park on the next block—and passed under the streetlight diagonally across from the vestibule.

  “Hey,” he said, “hold up, pops.”

  Brent DeKuiper.

  I held up, with leftover anger kicking up in me, and watched him hoist his massive body out of the Caddy. When he shut the door I said, “So now you know who and what I am. And that I’m not a goddamn pervert.”

  “Yeah. Guy in Gianna’s building told me.”

  “George Ferry?”

  “Him, yeah.”

  “Uh-huh. You didn’t push him around, did you?”

  Lopsided grin. “Flexed muscle. All it took.”

  “What do you want, DeKuiper?”

  “Bad scene other day,” he said. “Sorry, man. But hell, didn’t say who you were.”

  “Your fault or mine—which is it?”

  “Said sorry, man.”

  “Sure. Except that guys like you don’t hang around places waiting to apologize for your mistakes. What do you really want?”

  “Gianna,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Worried about her, what happened to Ashley.”

  “Found out she’s missing and Ferry told you I might be looking for her and now so are you. That the way it is?”

  “Yeah. Find her yet?”

  “No.”

  “Leads?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me you knew anything, huh, pops?”

  “Sure thing,” I lied. “Why would I hold back?”

  “Still pissed, maybe.”

  “I don’t hold grudges.”

  “Me neither. Think Bisconte hurt her too?”

  “I don’t know. Police’ll ask him when they catch him.”

  “Better catch him before I do.”

  “But you don’t know where he might have gone.”

  “No,” DeKuiper said.

  “Tell me if you did, huh?”

  The lopsided grin again. “Sure thing, pops.”

  “How well do you know Bisconte?”

  “Well enough. Prick.”

  “Why? Because he had his hooks into Gianna?”

  “Hooks? Shi
t, he’s her pimp. So what?”

  “That didn’t bother you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “You like her, maybe you’ve got a thing for her. Don’t you care that she’s been selling it with Bisconte’s help?”

  “Hell no. Everybody’s whore these days, one way or other. You, me, everybody.”

  “So then why don’t you like Bisconte?”

  “Reasons. Killed Ashley, didn’t he?”

  “Let’s talk about Gianna. When did you see her last?”

  “Week ago.”

  “Before the trouble with Ferry?”

  “Yeah. Would’ve fixed that myself, she’d asked.”

  “But she asked Bisconte instead.”

  “Her choice.”

  “When you saw her, she tell you anything about her weekend plans?”

  “No. Never talked about her tricks.”

  “Or mentioned the names of any of her johns?”

  “Hookers know better,” he said, and shrugged.

  “So you don’t know any of them.”

  “No. How about you? Find out any names?”

  “Not yet,” I lied. “Bisconte took Ashley’s address book— Gianna’s, too, for all I know. There wasn’t anything in the apartment to give me a line on her johns.”

  DeKuiper raked fingers through his dirty-blond beard. His eyes were bright and hard in the reflected shine from the streetlamp. “Sure not holding out on me?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Bust your ass, find out you are.”

  “Stuff your threats, DeKuiper. You don’t scare me.”

  “No? Not much fight in you, other day.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” I said thinly. “There was plenty of fight in me but it was your turf. This is mine. You want to find out how much fight I’ve got in me right now?”

  “Tough talk for old man.”

  “Talk’s cheap. Well?”

  He tried to hurt me with his eyes.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “I’m going inside now ... unless you want to try to stop me.”

  I put my back to him, walked into the vestibule. He didn’t try to stop me. Behind me he said, “Find Gianna, find out anything about her, better let me know. Mean it, pops. Know what’s good for you, let me know.”

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t bother to look at him again as I unlocked the door and let myself inside.

  THREE CALL-BACK MESSAGES: Kerry, Frank Plutarski, Barney Rivera. I rang Kerry first, but her line was busy. Plutarski was next. His line was clear and he was the one who answered.