by Janet Dawson
Eight
MONDAY AFTERNOON I SAT RESTLESSLY IN MY Toyota, opposite Raynor’s apartment building. He arrived at four o’clock, wearing his uniform, got out of his Trans-Am and went upstairs. I spent the next hour thinking how excruciatingly boring tail jobs are. This whole case seemed to be at a standstill. None of the credit reports I’d requested had come in today. None of my feelers about Raynor’s finances had netted any information so far. I suspected that was because he’d been back in California for such a short time he hadn’t generated much of a paper trail. Besides, he was being careful not to leave any evidence about his true financial status.
I planned to talk to Chief Yancy, whose address was the Marion Court cottage, site of the Friday night poker game. Perhaps Raynor had given some of the money to his chief, disguised as gambling losses. Other than that, I contemplated the prospect of making cold calls to every financial institution in the Bay Area to see if Sam Raynor had an account, a long and tedious process. Something had better happen soon, before I faced hours on the phone.
At five Raynor left the apartment, in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. As the Trans-Am turned left onto Pacific, I started my Toyota. I almost lost him as he took a left onto Webster Street. I made it through the yellow light and followed him through the Tube. Once in Oakland, Raynor made a series of turns that put him on the southbound Nimitz Freeway. It was rush hour and traffic was slow, good news for me, since Raynor drove like the proverbial bat out of hell. He was a lane hopper, but as we passed the Oakland Coliseum he veered into the far right lane and stayed, despite the slower traffic. Raynor took Davis Street into San Leandro. I followed him onto Estudillo Avenue, where he turned right into the parking lot of an apartment building, so quickly that I overshot the entrance.
I circled the block. By the time I made it back to Estudillo, Raynor was climbing the stairs at the street end of the building. It was another ticky-tacky stucco box, this one painted a particularly unpleasant shade of green. Set perpendicular to the street, the structure was three stories high, with parking stalls at ground level and two floors above, each with six doors opening onto an exterior walkway fronted by flimsy-looking metal railings. Raynor was now on the top floor, knocking on the second door from this end. The only person who responded was an elderly woman in the first apartment. She opened her door and looked out at Raynor, who stuck something—a note?—in the crack between door and frame. He headed for the stairs, ignoring the old woman.
When Raynor departed, I stayed. I wanted to know who lived here. As I walked toward the building, I saw that the apartment doors were lettered rather than numbered. The unit where Raynor had left the note was H. I headed for the mailboxes. Glancing up, I saw the flick of a curtain and a white-haired figure watching me from unit G. The name slot for apartment H held a card with a name printed in block letters—Tiffany Collins.
It would be a Tiffany, I thought. So Sam Raynor did have a girlfriend. I wondered if she was short and blond, like Ruth Raynor. I’d have liked to examine whatever he’d left at Tiffany Collins’s door, but I didn’t want an encounter with the nosy neighbor. I returned to my car and waited.
For the next half hour AC Transit buses lumbered past on both Estudillo and Bancroft, discharging commuters on their way home. I saw several tenants arrive, collect their mail, and trudge up the stairs to their apartments. Twice the curtains in the corner unit shifted, as the old woman looked down to see if I was still there.
Just after six I heard a roar that brought the old woman back to her watching post. A Harley-Davidson turned off Estudillo into the lot. The helmeted rider parked near the hedge that separated the property from the building next door, almost even with my car. I watched as he removed the helmet and set it on the seat.
He was a biker. He wore faded blue jeans, heavy boots, and a leather vest over a white T-shirt that revealed tattoos on both forearms. He turned so that his back was to me, and I noticed some sort of insignia on his vest. I couldn’t read it because it was partly covered by his lank blond ponytail. Then he shifted position, his face in profile, obscured by a beard. Medium height, early thirties, I guessed, though it was hard to judge with all that facial foliage.
The biker fired up a cigarette and looked up to the third floor, where the watchful old woman stared down from her window. He stared right back at her and blew a few smoke rings as he leaned on his bike. Was he waiting for Tiffany Collins? An old boyfriend, the kind who might attack Tiffany’s new boyfriend? He slouched against the bike and smoked the cigarette down to the butt. Then he dropped it to the pavement, grinding it out with his boot. He straightened and looked toward the street.
A car purred into the parking lot, a Mercedes, several years old, its gleaming finish the color of old gold. The driver parked the car in the slot Sam Raynor had vacated. A young woman emerged from the sedan, a handbag with a long strap swinging from her right shoulder. Her left hand grasped the handles of several shopping bags.
She was a short blonde, all right, with a mane of shoulder-length hair the color of corn silk, and a bosomy figure packed into a thigh-high blue dress that showed off a pair of shapely legs. I wondered how she could walk in those high heels, but she managed to cover ground rapidly, reaching the mailboxes just as the biker reached her. She opened the mailbox for H, pulled out a couple of envelopes and tossed them into one of her shopping bags.
Tiffany Collins? She lives in a place like this but drives a Mercedes? That dichotomy was certainly worth investigating.
The woman turned to face the biker. I couldn’t see their faces clearly, but there was a lot of gesturing going on. Their decibel level was high enough for me to hear a couple of words, high enough to bring the old lady in apartment G out onto the walkway, craning for a look and a listen. She scurried for cover as Tiffany Collins stamped one high-heeled foot, stuck her nose into the air and started up the stairs. The biker, angry, judging from his body language, headed for his Harley.
I could always come back to talk to Tiffany, I reasoned, turning the key on the Toyota. Now I wanted to find out who the biker was. The Harley snarled to life. I followed it west, toward downtown San Leandro, where it pulled into the lot outside a large drugstore.
The biker parked the Harley near the entrance. He left the helmet on the seat and strode through the automatic doors. I walked over to the Harley, pulling a notebook and pen from my purse. I quickly wrote down the motorcycle’s license plate number, stowed pen and paper, and turned, heading back to my car.
A hand like a vise grabbed my arm and spun me around, propelling me backward against the brick wall of the building. I felt a frisson of alarm as I looked into the sharp blue eyes in the bearded face. It wasn’t so much that I feared for my safety. We were about the same height and I could fight him off if I had to. Besides, there were plenty of customers going in and out of the drugstore. But he looked a lot like one of the thugs who beat me up in an Oakland parking lot a few years ago. The resemblance put me off balance for a moment as I pushed back the past and focused on the present.
“I spotted you at the apartment,” he growled, lips moving in the bearded face. “You followed me here. Why?”
I revised my estimate of his age upward. There was a lot of gray in the beard and the ponytailed hair, and the lines in his face were wrought by hard living. A mechanic, I guessed, examining the hand that gripped my arm. It was callused and scarred, with the sort of grime under the fingernails that required heavy-duty soap and a brush to remove. Above the hand a muscled forearm was tattoed with four blue letters.
“Acey. Is that what they call you?”
“Never mind what they call me. Who the fuck are you?”
“Jeri Howard. I’m a private investigator.”
He didn’t look impressed. “You got something proves that?”
“Let go of my arm and I’ll show you my license.”
He released me. I stuck my hand in my purse and pulled out the license. The blue eyes examined it, then returned to my face. “Inves
tigating what?”
“Sam Raynor.” He didn’t say anything, mouth pulled down into a frown. He pulled a fresh pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, tore it open and knocked out one, lighting it with a tarnished Zippo. “You know Sam Raynor?” I asked, returning the license to my purse.
His mouth had a grim set as he blew smoke to one side. “If the motherfucker don’t stay away from my sister, I’m gonna have his liver for breakfast.”
I folded my arms in front of me as I revised my scenario from disgruntled boyfriend to concerned older brother. Either way, he could be useful.
“Tiffany Collins is your sister?” He nodded. “You know anything about a couple of bikers who jumped Raynor two weeks ago in the parking lot of Nadine’s in Alameda?” I got no answer. If he’d had anything to do with that incident, he wasn’t copping to it. “What do you know about Raynor?”
“He’s slime.” Acey Collins sneered, mouth twisting as he took another hit on his cigarette. “I had his number the first time I met him.”
The man in front of me looked as though he knew a thing or two about slime. “The evidence seems to point in that direction. Maybe we can help each other out.”
“What’s your angle? Who you working for?”
“Raynor’s wife. Soon to be ex-wife. Did you know he was married?”
“Yeah. He fed Tiff some line about how his old lady took a hike and won’t let him see the kid. I figure it’s bullshit.”
“She did leave him. She has her reasons.”
“Such as?”
“He beat her up once too often.”
Acey Collins’s eyes narrowed into cold blue slits. “He ever lays a hand on my sister, he’s dead meat.”
“All the more reason for you to help me.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Money. Raynor had a big bankroll on Guam. Now that it’s time to divvy up the community property, he says he’s broke.”
Acey considered this for a moment as he puffed on his cigarette. “He spends a lot of money on Tiff, throws it around like it was water. Buys her lots of presents too. Last time it was a gold chain, must have cost five hundred.”
“We’re talking about a lot more money than that.”
“You see that fancy car my sister’s driving? A Mercedes. A few years old. Previously owned, as they say.” He gave the words a sardonic twist as he folded his arms across his chest. “Hell, I know what a used Mercedes costs. It ain’t cheap. Tiff can’t afford a car like that. She’s civil service, works on the base at Alameda, fer crissakes. That’s where she met the creep.”
“You think Raynor gave her the money to buy it?”
“A month ago she was driving a Japanese four-banger. I got the damn thing down at my shop, trying to sell it. No takers yet. Yeah, I think he gave her the money for the car, but she claims she borrowed it from her credit union. She’s playing games with me. I hate it when she does that.” He grimaced, his gray-blond eyebrows drawing together.
“Why would she hook up with a guy like Raynor?”
“Shit, I don’t know. I thought she had more sense. She’s usually pretty sharp when it comes to men, but this creep Raynor, he’s got her—” He stopped, searching for a word. “Mesmerized. That’s it. Like what a snake does to a rabbit before he eats the sucker.”
“Let’s hope we can keep Tiffany from being eaten,” I said. “If Raynor did buy her the Mercedes, he may be using her to hide his assets from his wife. And that’s fraud. It looked like the two of you were having words. What about?”
He tossed the cigarette to the pavement and crushed it out, taking his time answering. “Raynor’s got another woman. Don’t know who she is. But I saw them together in Oakland.”
“Been keeping an eye on Sam?”
“Yeah. And I’m gonna continue to keep an eye on the bastard. Until Tiff wises up.”
“How did she react when you told her about the other woman?”
Acey snorted. “Didn’t believe me. Said I was lying.”
“What did you see? When and where?”
“Saturday night, Lake Merritt in Oakland. Raynor met a woman in the parking lot near the boathouse. She got out of her car and they got into his backseat. It was damn clear they were more than friends.”
“Did you get a good look at her and her car?” I asked.
“Yeah. Wasn’t quite dark yet. Short blond hair, maybe five-four. Driving a late model Nissan, cranberry-colored, with one of those Navy stickers in the front windshield.”
“Could you tell if the sticker was red or blue?” Officers like Alex had blue stickers on their cars, allowing them to drive past the Marine guards at the gate of the Alameda Naval Air Station. Cars belonging to enlisted personnel bore red stickers.
Acey Collins shook his head. “No. Just know it was one of those base stickers.”
I mulled this over for a moment. The woman who met Sam Raynor at the boathouse could be in the service herself, married to someone who was, or even the daughter of a military family. The base sticker meant she had access to a service member’s car. Alameda was the nearest military base, but that didn’t mean she had come from the air station. There were other possibilities in the Bay Area, Army and Air Force as well as Navy.
“Thanks for the information. I’ll look into it. How can I get in touch with you?”
“I’ll find you,” Acey Collins said. “You got a card or something?”
I dug a business card out of my purse. “There’s an answering machine on the phone.”
I stepped back as he fired up the Harley. After he’d gone, I retraced my route to Tiffany Collins’s apartment building, only to discover the gold Mercedes gone. I’d missed her while I was talking to Acey, but the information her brother gave me was worth it. Another woman in Sam Raynor’s life meant another possible hiding place for Raynor’s money.
Nine
THE NEXT MORNING I CALLED SERGEANT ANGIE Walters in Records at the Oakland Police Department. “I need to find out if you have a sheet on someone.”
“Didn’t think you were calling to exchange recipes,” Angie rasped. “Who is it?”
“Collins, Acey.” I spelled the name. “Blond and blue, five-eight, about thirty-five. Rides a Harley.”
Angie said she’d put her ear to the ground and get back to me. I poured myself a cup of coffee, then returned to my desk to make another phone call, to a friend who worked at NAS Alameda.
Mary and I met eight years ago when we both signed up for a paralegal course in San Francisco. Back then I was a legal secretary, spending my free time playing roles with various little theater groups and wondering why I’d majored in history since I didn’t want to teach. Mary was the widow of a Navy man who’d died in a shipboard accident, a boiler room explosion. Faced with a small pension and three kids to raise, she didn’t have any choice but to work. Both of us thought the paralegal program might give us an edge in the job market. I had no idea I was about to meet a private investigator named Errol Seville, who would take me under his wing as an operative. All I knew was legal research looked a lot more interesting than typing and filing legal documents.
Mary stayed with paralegal work, first at an Oakland law firm, then a civil service position with the Navy, which had officers of the Judge Advocate Corps—Navy lawyers—assigned to the Naval Legal Service office at Treasure Island. She lived in Oakland and didn’t care for the commute halfway across the Bay Bridge, so last year she’d transferred to a position at NAS Alameda. It wasn’t legal work, but at the time, she told me she was ready for a change.
When I asked her about Tiffany Collins, Mary chuckled. “How in the world did you meet her? Is this about one of your investigations?”
“Yes, it is. Does she work in your building?”
“She does indeed. Right here in the civilian personnel office. I can see her desk from where I sit. She’s not here today, though. She took a day’s leave. Something about an appointment.”
“Tell me about her.” I shifted in my ch
air and reached for my coffee.
“G.S. Five clerk-typist. I’m not sure how long she’s worked here, but I think it’s at least four or five years. I get the impression she’s been around awhile. You know how I can tell? She’s got an ivy plant on her desk and it’s climbed halfway up the wall. And bunnies everywhere.” Mary laughed but she didn’t explain the bunny remark. “Anyway, she does her job well. It’s what she does outside the job that excites some comment.”
“Such as?”
“Well, have you seen her?”
“From a distance. Short blonde, nice figure, great legs.”
“And dresses to show it off,” Mary finished. “All she has to do is stroll down the sidewalk and every sailor and Marine on this base starts salivating. It’s only normal. The girl’s young and attractive. The grapevine says she likes to have fun.”
“What else does the grapevine say?”
“Lately?” Mary’s voice dropped, and I surmised that someone had come within hearing range of her desk. “Well, rumor has it the girl’s in love. She’s been seen on the arm of a good-looking sailor. And she’s driving a fancy car. The kind that makes me wonder how she can afford the insurance, let alone the payments. Say, Jeri, I hope she’s not in some kind of trouble. She really is a nice kid. Just, well, young and foolish. We were all young and foolish once.”
True, I thought, but you couldn’t afford to be young and foolish around Sam Raynor. It was too dangerous.
The morning mail brought the credit check I’d initiated on Sam Raynor, which didn’t tell me anything more than what I already knew. I was convinced that Raynor had stashed the money with friends. The fact that his current girlfriend was driving a car that cost forty or fifty thousand dollars waved at me like a bright red flag. That gold Mercedes was more car than the average low-level civil servant could afford.
Was the car in her name? I had a scenario in mind, in which Sam Raynor disguised some of his funds by purchasing the car and putting it in Tiffany Collins’s name. If Tiffany was under Raynor’s spell, she’d be ripe for the usual story about the greedy, grasping wife after revenge and money. Or perhaps the car was in fact registered to Sam Raynor, and his girlfriend was driving it, though yesterday’s chat with Acey Collins made me think otherwise.
