I recalled that an Improv club had opened downtown recently. “They’re a chain?”
“Some people call them the ‘Baskin-Robbins of comedy.’ Squeaky-clean stuff, no offensive material; they’re tied in to a couple of TB shows. Good clubs, but they really have more appeal to tourists or suburbanites than locals. But to get back to your question, Café Comedie is more or less Jay’s hobby. Some people retire and play golf; Jay became a champion of young aspiring comics.”
“When you came in, you mentioned loan papers, and I see there are real estate contracts here on Jay’s desk. Is he thinking of expanding or changing locations?”
A smile flickered across his thin lips, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “You’re quite interested in Jay’s affairs. But it’s no secret: he and I have a second partnership, in real estate development. We’ve been buying up SoMa properties and holding them to see which way things go here.”
The SoMa real estate market, I had heard, was a fluctuating one whose eventual direction could mold the development of San Francisco business for decades to come. The area was currently caught in a tug-of-war between those who advocated increasing the number of industrial and service businesses, and an older community of residents and artists-including the clubs-who favored maintaining the status quo. Multibillion-dollar developments such as the Mission Bay complex and Yerba Buena Gardens had served to stimulate property trading, and once-low rents had risen tenfold in only a dozen years.
“What do you mean-holding?” I asked.
“Just as it sounds. We’re maintaining the existing structures and renting them out. We’ll develop the properties after the city adopts definitive growth controls. I’ve a theory that runs contrary to what most developers would tell you: too much money has been pumped into commercial property in the last few years. There’s bound to be a downswing. I’ve always survived the down cycles by buying undervalued parcels and holding onto them until the upswing. That’s the policy Jay and I are-”
The office door opened. I looked that way, expecting to see Larkey. A woman stood there instead. She was tall, close to six feet, and clad in a long red leather coat, boots, and a floppy red hat. Black curls framed a face whose handsomeness was marred by a slash of blood-red lipstick. She wore numerous rings, a great deal of Giorgio perfume, and a suddenly sour expression. After she recovered from her initial surprise at seeing a stranger in Larkey’s chair, her eyes flicked over me appraisingly, then dismissed me as no competition.
The look told me more about her than she’d probably care for me to know: she was one of that type who don’t like other women, would have no close women friends. To her the rest of us represented the enemy, who might steal her man or her place in the spotlight. I instantly distrust a woman like her, just as I do a man who dislikes others of his gender.
Rob Soriano seemed amused by the look. He said, “Kathy, this is Sharon McCone. She’s a private investigator working on the Kostakos murder. Sharon-my wife, Kathy.”
Kathy Soriano frowned at me. “I thought the Kostakos case was a dead issue, pun intended.” Before I could reply, she added, “Look, Rob, we need to check out the new girl in the ten-o’clock slot. Where’s Jay?”
“Right behind you,” Larkey’s voice said. He pushed around her and said apologetically to me, “Sorry I had to cut our conversation short. Can we continue it another time?”
I stood up and came around the desk. “Sure. If it’s okay with you, I want to talk with Marc Emmons and your parking attendants. I’ll check back with you later.”
Larkey gave me a card printed with both his numbers at the club and at home. The four of us left the office and went down the hall, Kathy prattling about how she and Rob didn’t think the new comedian in the ten-o’clock slot was going to work out. Wasn’t it a pity, she said, that the Kostakos case really was a dead issue? The little girl had shown a lot of talent.
“I’ll never forget the routine about the feminist. It wasn’t even what she said but how she said it: ‘If God had meant for us to have hairy armpits, would She have given us Nair?’”
Rob Soriano grunted in annoyance and strode ahead of us. Larkey said, “I hate it when you mimic her like that. It’s as if she’s right here with us-but she’s not.”
“Oh, Jay, lighten up!”
Larkey didn’t reply, merely hunched his shoulders inside his sweat suit. Whether the woman was embarrassing him or had seriously upset him, I couldn’t tell. When we entered the club itself, he winked at me and followed the Sorianos to a reserved table at the rear.
I went to stand by the bar, watching the new comedian begin her routine until the busy barkeep could get to me. She was actually pretty funny, delivering a rapid-fire commentary on some of the more outrageous headlines in the tabloid newspapers; I made a mental note to tell Ted Smalley he should catch her act-quickly, in case Kathy and Rob Soriano’s opinion of it prevailed.
The bartender spoke over my shoulder. I declined a drink and asked where I could find Marc Emmons.
“He left as soon as he finished his routine.” The man paused. “Funny about that-he asked me if Jay was free, and I said he was talking to a private eye about Tracy. I thought he’d be excited, want to sit in on the conversation, but all of a sudden he split.”
Now, that was odd, I thought. “Did you know Tracy?”
“Some. But the younger crowd, they keep to themselves.”
“What about Bobby Foster?”
“Not too well, but from what I saw of him, he was a nice kid.”
“Who was he friends with here at the club, besides Tracy?”
The bartender thought a moment. “I guess that would be Lisa McIntyre, one of the waitresses.”
“Is she here tonight?”
“No, Lisa quit a long time ago. I don’t know where she is now.”
I could check on Lisa McIntyre’s address with Larkey in the morning. I thanked the bartender and went outside.
It had started to drizzle, but the wind no longer blew and the air felt warmer. The pair of parking attendants I’d seen earlier stood under the canopy. I went up to them and said I’d like to ask them some questions.
As it turned out, neither had known Bobby Foster or Tracy Kostakos; they’d hired on at about the same time, only six months before. They were able to explain how the parking setup worked, however.
“There’s a lot over on Brannan,” the older one, a dark-haired man with a beard, said. “City law says restaurants and clubs can’t use street parking, so Larkey rents space. Thing is, it’s shared, and on the busy nights it gets pretty hairy in this neighborhood. So you bend the law some. First you try the lot. If it’s full, you find a place on the street, tag the keys with the location. Jog back here, do it all over again.” He held up his foot, which was shod in a good brand of running shoe.
“What about the keys? Do you keep them on you?”
His coworker, a redhead, went over to a metal box hanging unobtrusively from the top rail of the fence that enclosed the area containing the wrought-iron tables. “Too much chance of losing them or being on break when the owner wants to leave.” He opened the hinged front of the box; inside were rows of keys hanging on hooks. The labels above them designated various streets.
“Does this box lock?” I asked.
“No.”
“So anybody could reach in there and take a set of keys.”
“Sure. But there’s usually somebody here-we’ve got a couple of guys off sick tonight-and you’d have to know about the box to begin with.”
“Would other employees of the club know?”
He looked at his coworker, who shrugged. “Probably, if they bothered to watch us work.”
A Porsche pulled up at the front of the canopy. The bearded man said to the redhead, “Your turn.”
I watched him hand out a woman in a fur coat, then take the keys from the man. “Is business always this slow?” I asked the remaining attendant.
“No. Christmas holidays, a lot of people busy
with parties or out of town. But it’s never like North Beach. That’s a bitch. You get crazy drivers, drunks, dangerous characters. There’s a lot of hostility coming from the customers and other valets. Private parties in places like Pacific Heights are a little better, but folks up there think the street belongs to them and call the cops if you park next to their driveways. Plus the guests look at you like you’re some kind of a servant and stiff you on the tip. This is a good gig here; I’m gonna try to stick around.”
“The other guy mentioned a couple of attendants who are off. Did either of them know Kostakos or Forster?”
“Nah, they only been here a couple of months. None of us’re real steady workers.”
“Does anybody at the club ever talk about the murder?”
“Sometimes. In whispers.”
“What do they say?”
“That Foster was railroaded. But face it, nobody wants to think somebody he knows can do a thing like that.”
The redhead returned, jogging. Another car approached; the man I’d been talking with went to the curb. I thanked them both for their time and started down the sidewalk.
The drizzle had become a full-blown rain by now. Most of South Park’s buildings were dark; here and there light showed behind closed blinds or around yellowed shades. Along with the rain, the wind kicked up again; it rattled the bare branches of the sycamore trees ringing the park; their leaves lay sodden on the ground.
I glanced at my watch and shivered. Ten-thirty on a rainy Thursday night in winter. A little less than two years before, Tracy Kostakos had gone to her unknown fate at just about this time on just such a night. Had she walked this way, feeling the drops on her head and wishing for a hat, as I was? Or had she ignored them, moving purposefully-and if so, to what end? And had Bobby Foster walked beside her, or was he telling the truth-that they’d argued and parted?
Not for the first time I was afraid I’d prove unequal to feeling my way through the dark maze that lay between the present and that long-ago night. But the desire to shed light on its events had taken firm root within me. It wasn’t even desire, but raw necessity-for the sake of the man whose life I held in my hands.
7
George Kostakos said, “Do you realize what it will do to people, your resurrecting this tragedy?”
“I’m afraid I can’t get beyond the fact that it may save a young man’s life.”
He lowered his handsome, rough-hewn face into his palms, ran long fingers through thick black hair that was frosted with gray. “Christ, I know it’s unconscionable to put my own feelings first, while that kid’s sitting up there waiting to die. But we’ve all been through such agony, dammit. I don’t want the people I care about to suffer that again. And I certainly don’t want to relive it myself.”
I remained silent, giving him time to get his emotions under control. It was eleven o’clock Friday morning. We were seated in the living room of his borrowed house in the Marina district, directly across the street from the Palace of Fine arts. Through the front window I could see the icy-gray lagoon bordered by wind-warped cypress trees; beyond it the tan colonnade and domed rotunda-relics of the 1915 exposition celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal-were shrouded in mist. Kostakos had explained that a friend who was temporarily living in Europe had offered him the use of the house when he’d separated from his wife the previous summer. Even if he hadn’t told me that, I would have guessed it wasn’t his, because nothing about it went with the man seated across from me.
The house actually had a schizoid quality. The exterior was Mediterranean, as many of the buildings in that quiet, affluent area of the city are: white stucco, with black ornamental grillwork and decorative yew trees; possessed of the obligatory postage-stamp front lawn; two storied, with a garage below the living room window and a door enclosed in a Moorish arch. From the outside it seemed an ordinary-enough house for the Marina, although its location would make it more expensive than most.
Inside was another story. The owner had taken it upon himself to create a designer’s showcase dream that would be a nightmare to anyone desirous of living comfortable. The walls of the first-floor entry were starkly white; it contained nothing whatsoever except a polished black rock on a pedestal. The uncarpeted stairs rose to a living room off a gallery-also white, with bare, bleached wood floors. Two pairs of Spartan chrome-and-leather chairs faced each other at right angles to the fireplace; they struck me as the modern-day equivalent of those prissy antiques that are guaranteed to be unsittable and will probably fall apart if you try. A second grouping of chairs and tables at the far end of the room looked similarly inhospitable, and the only sign of human habitation was a book- and paper-heaped desk in front of the window. I assumed that was Kostakos’s import.
The chairs had proved as unsittable as they looked, at least for any length of time. I shifted on mine now, waiting for Kostakos to speak.
Finally he raised his head and looked me in the eye. His were gold-flecked hazel, the kind that can surprise you by sometimes appearing either green or blue. He said, “I’m not going to try to obstruct your investigation, but I don’t care to help you, either.”
I hesitated, framing my reply carefully. “I’m not asking you to help, not in any material way. The reason I wanted to talk with you is that I’m trying to form some kind of impression of your daughter. I’ve heard various things about her-from her mother, her roommate, her employer-and it will round out the picture to hear what you have to say.”
He regarded me intently for a moment, then got up and moved restively around the barren room. He was tall and lean, and his body-clad in a blue chambray workshirt and jeans-seemed to hum with a pent-up energy. This man, I sensed, would do nothing halfway. Whatever he turned his hand to would receive his total concentration and effort-be it teaching, writing, research, or things personal.
Face it, McCone, my often annoying inner voice said as I watched him pace, your prim-and-proper “things personal” is a euphemism for sex.
Not totally, I countered. But if so, what of it? I’m not allowed to think about sex? I certainly ought to be, after all these months without it.
But the thought was unsettling nonetheless, and when Kostakos sat back down, I had difficulty meeting his eyes.
He said, “You’ve talked with Laura?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“How is she?”
“Lonely.”
His eyes became shadowed, their color edging toward the green; the fine lines around them grew tight, as if he were in pain. After a pause he said, “I’m sorry about that. I’ve told her she ought to get out, go back to the university, start seeing her therapist again-anything but sit there in that house or that wretched apartment.”
“You know about her weekly visits there?”
“I know.” His lips pursed; the knowledge had left a bitter taste.
“Amy Barbour knows, too,” I said. “She’s afraid Laura might be self-destructive or dangerous to her.”
“Amy Barbour is a twit. Laura’s incapable of harming herself or anyone else. She’s much too selfish for that.”
The harsh judgment shocked me. It showed on my face, because Kostakos immediately added, “Selfishness isn’t really a negative trait, you know.”
“If you say so-you’re the psychologist.”
“There’s a difference between selfishness and self-centeredness,” he said. “Self-centered people are narcissists, engrossed in only what concerns them. Selfish people, on the other hand, tend to put their own welfare first, but they realize they’re not the center of the universe. They’re often able to do extremely well by others, because they take care of themselves and can be quite effective in their endeavors. When I say Laura is selfish, I mean she looks out for herself. It’s her way of getting through.”
“She doesn’t seem to be doing too good a job of it recently, though.”
“No.” He hesitated, eyes clouded again. “But there’s nothing I can do about that.”
; “You mentioned her way of getting through. What’s yours?” It was a very personal question, but Kostakos seemed candid enough to answer it, and I wanted to keep him talking.
He motioned at the desk in the front window. “My work. It takes me outside myself.”
“Laura said you’ve both taken leaves of absence from Stanford. Are you teaching somewhere else?”
“Something like that. I’m involved with a group called Living Victims. Have you heard of it?”
“No.”
“It’s a support group for friends and relatives of murder victims. Sort of like Parents of Murdered Children, except it’s not limited to blood relatives. They helped me a lot when I first moved to the city, and now I’m trying to return some of that by assisting them with grant writing. And I’m also working on a book that I’d started…before.”
“What’s the book about?”
“It outlines a psychological model-” He broke off. “You don’t really want to hear about it.”
“Actually, I do. I was a soc major at Berkeley, and I took a good bit of psych, too.”
Kostakos looked pleased. I assumed he spent a good deal of time alone, and although his involvement with Living Victims would bring him into contact with a fair number of people, most of them would have little interest in his psychological theories.
“The model is a system of personality classification, based on whether a person is primarily action oriented, emotional, or intellectual,” he said. “Within the various categories there are three levels-the healthy, the normative, and the pathological. That’s nothing new; it’s a synthesis of various models that have been around for a long time. What I’m trying to do is explain it in layman’s terms as well as develop guidelines that people can use to move in the direction of the healthy level.”
“A self-help book, right?”
He smiled ruefully. “I know-one more to add to the legion in the stores. But I’ve got a lot of confidence in this project; what people don’t realize is that within any one personality category there are individuals who don’t seem to have anything in common because they’re operating at different levels. But all of those-except for the most severely disturbed-are capable of moving toward the highest level without making any fundamental changes in who or what they are.”
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