“Can you give me an example of one of these groups?”
“Sure. Think of historical figures, leaders-the good guys. Who comes to mind?”
“Well, since we’ve had a shortage of those lately, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King.”
“Okay. Do you know who those people would share a group with? The Reverand Jim Jones and Charles Manson.”
“Good Lord.”
“Pathological to healthy. Now this model-” Again he broke off. “Look, would you like some coffee?”
“Sure, that would be nice.” As he stood up, I added, “Let me help you make it-I’m curious about the rest of this house.”
“Strange, isn’t it? I still haven’t gotten used to it, and I doubt I ever will.”
Kostakos led me around the stairwell to the other side of the gallery. A dining room opened off it. The walls in there were desert orange, the table a slab of something that resembled petrified wood. Tall cacti stood in the corners like entrapped outlaws, their arms reaching for the sky-or in this case, skylight.
“The southwestern room?” I asked.
“Yes-a decided contrast to the North Polar living room.”
Kostakos pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen. It was large and high ceilinged, with more skylights, more bleached wood and white walls. The starkness was alleviated by shelves of colorful cookbooks, a great many hanging baskets, and large bunches of dried red peppers. Beneath the bentwood table lay an enormous black-and-white cowhide rug.
“The peppers and baskets carry on the southwestern motif,” I said, “and that rug’s definitely Texas.”
Kostakos laughed. “This house suffers from an extreme identity crisis. There’s a game room downstairs that’s Hollywood kitsch. The master bedroom’s all antlers and moose-hide-north-woods theme. The guest bedroom’s southern-flower prints and white lace and little lavender-scented pillows. If you woke up in there, you’d half expect Butterfly McQueen to come sashaying in with your breakfast tray.”
“What in God’s name is the owner like?”
“He’s a mild-mannered medical researcher at UCSF. But I suspect he has a rich fantasy life.” Kostakos went to the U-shaped workspace at the end of the room. “What kind of coffee would you like? We have Brazilian, Zimbabwe, Colombian-Armenian, and Plantation Blend dark roast.”
I was embarrassed to tell him that to me coffee is just coffee, despite my efforts to educate myself to the contrary.
Kostakos grinned at my confused silence. “I don’t care, either. Coffee’s good if it’s strong and drinkable. I’ve been using the dark roast because there seem to be cases of it in the pantry.” He busied himself with a grinder and beans.
I sat at the table, stooping first to pat the rough cowhide. “About your personality classifications-which one are you?”
Without hesitation he replied, “My group’s the one described as the intellectuals.”
“Fitting, considering you’re a professor.”
“You’d be surprised how often a person’s group doesn’t mesh with his or her profession. But I must say I like my group. We’re perceptive, analytical, produce very original ideas. Some of us have been on the genius level. Freud, for example.” He set the coffeemaker going and faced me. “Of course, there are those who claim Hitler may have been one of us.”
“That’s not too encouraging. I wonder which group I am?”
He got out coffee mugs and set them on the table. Even the mugs in this house were at odds: one was a caricature of Richard Nixon, ski-jump nose and all; the other was Jimmy Carter, big white teeth agleam.
Kostakos regarded me thoughtfully. “I’d have to know you a lot better to say for sure, but if I were to hazard a guess from what I’ve observed of you and from knowing your profession, I’d say your group is the same as mine.”
“Oh, come on! I’m no intellectual.”
“That’s just a convenient label. You’re straightforward, give evidence of being analytical. You think before you speak, phrase what you say precisely. In your business, you’re certain to be logical and perceptive. I also sense you might have what’s known in psychological jargon as ‘the third ear’ –the ability to hear meanings beyond what a person’s actually saying. You’ve got intuitive and emotional qualities. You just don’t let them get in the way.”
He made me sound like quite a sterling character. I basked in the flattery as he fetched the coffeepot.
“Of course,” he added as he poured, “there’s another side to our group, as exemplified by Hitler’s presence. We tend to become rigid in our ideas. We develop theories and won’t turn loose of them. We can become extremists.” He replaced the coffeepot on the warmer and sat across from me.
“I knew it sounded too good to be true.” I sampled the coffee and found it excellent, even to my unsophisticated taste. “How’d you know that I don’t use milk or sugar?”
“It’s a characteristic of people in our group.” At my incredulous look, he added, “Actually, I don’t use them, and I just forgot to offer any.”
“Those negative things you mentioned, a lot of them are valid for me,” I said. “That rigidity?...”
He nodded.
“Once, right after I’d gotten my degree and couldn’t find a job, I took a personality test to see if I was suited for-don’t laugh-a career in life insurance sales. Do you know what the results said? They said I could be ‘pushy, severe, and dominant.’”
He raised Nixon to me. “That’s our group.”
“What else can you tell me about us?”
“Well, do you ever get reclusive? Standoffish? Kind of prickly?”
“I’ve felt that way for close to a year now-as if I’ve built a wall around me so nobody can come too close.”
“Bad sign. Unhealthy end of the scale. Look out for creeping paranoia. You may become obsessed with peculiar ideas, feel prey to any number of indefinable threats. When that happens, insanity with schizophrenic tendencies lies just around the bend.”
I choked on my coffee. “You sound just like a fortune teller I used to know.”
He smiled and patted my hand. “Cheer up. When you go nuts, I’ll recommend a good psychiatrist.”
I drank some more coffee, feeling relaxed and companionable and oddly unwilling to bring the conversation back to the reason I’d come. But finally I said, “What group was Tracy?”
He was silent, looking down into his cup.
“From what people have told me, she must have inherited your sense of humor.”
“Actually she was more like her mother. Laura has very little sense of humor, and Tracy didn’t have a funny bone in her body.”
I thought of what Jay Larkey had told me-that for a funny lady, Tracy had taken herself very seriously. “How do you explain her becoming a comedian, then?”
“That was an outgrowth of her analytical ability. She knew what made other people laugh, and how to create it. She just didn’t laugh much herself. Sometimes people standing on the outside see what’s going on inside more clearly than those of us who are there.” He was silent for a while, then looked at me. “You did it, didn’t you?”
“Did what?”
“Got me talking about her, even though I said I wouldn’t.”
“It wasn’t all that calculated.”
“I didn’t think it was. But now that you’ve got me started, I might as well go on. Let’s go back to the living room, though; it’s too cheerful here to talk about somebody I loved who’d dead.” He listened to his words, then shook his head. “On the other hand, Tracy’s memory is so warm that it might do a great deal for that icy room up front.”
We went back to our unsittable chairs by the fireplace, and George talked of his daughter. He talked not in terms of his psychological model, or even with the detachment of one in his field, but as a still-grieving father.
Tracy’s birth had been premature; for a couple of days he and Laura hade feared they might lose her. But her will had proved larger than her tiny body, and
she quickly grew strong.
As soon as she could talk, she’d clamored for a baby sister. Laura could have no more children, but it wasn’t something a small child could understand.
She’d had five kittens. Each had met with disaster-speeding cars, leukemia, the neighbor’s dog. After the fifth died, she’d announced to her parents that she never wanted another pet. And she never acquired one.
George had worried for a while because she always had more imaginary friends than real ones. But she’d outgrown them, and when he’d first seen her perform comedy, he’d realized what fertile material those old pals had become.
She’d gotten pregnant during her senior year in high school; he and Laura had gone along with her decision to have an abortion. It had left no apparent emotional scars.
They’d both known she was unhappy at Foothill Junior College, and had noted her growing preoccupation with comedy with a certain unease. When she’d announced her desire to move to San Francisco, he’d been opposed at first. But Laura had convinced him of the damage an overprotective family can do, and in the end he’d given in.
No, he said, he didn’t resent Laura for pressuring him to allow the move that eventually led to Tracy’s death.
No, he and Tracy hadn’t talked much in the last three or four years of her life. He’d just assumed it was part of the natural separation process.
Had she abused their credit cards? He’d never had that impression, but Laura was the one who handled the bills, and she did have a tendency to be overindulgent where Tracy was concerned.
No, he guessed he hadn’t really known his daughter. Not at the time of her death.
Yes, he honestly believed she was dead. He had no illusions, unlike Laura.
“Why?” I asked.
“I went to the trial. I watched the evidence being presented day after day. There’s no doubt she’s dead.”
His hands were locked together between his bluejeaned knees; the knuckles showed white through his tan. His eyes were more greenish now; when I tried to hold his gaze, it slipped away from mine.
Finally he sighed. “Maybe it’s more that I have to believe it.”
“Why?”
“Because if she’s not dead, she has done a monstrous thing. If she’s not dead, she is someone I don’t want to acknowledge as my own.”
After a moment he added, “Please don’t find Tracy alive, Sharon. And if you do, don’t bring her back to me.”
8
After I left George Kostakos, I stopped at a phone booth and called Café Comedie. Larkey wasn’t in, but the woman who answered gave me the last address and phone number on file for Lisa McIntyre, the waitress who had been Bobby Foster’s friend. I called the number but found it now belonged to someone else, who had never heard of McIntyre. Next I tried to call Marc Emmons but got only a machine. Rae had had similar results the day before when she’d tried to arrange an appointment for me, so I decided the best place to catch Emmons would be at the club that evening.
Directory Assistance had no current listing for McIntyre, but her old address wasn’t far away, on Pacific Avenue just off Polk Street. I decided to drive over there and see if anyone knew where she’d moved; possibly one of the neighbors was still in touch with her.
The building on Pacific was a fairly large one, part commercial, with a furniture reupholstering workshop, bakery, and drugstore downstairs and apartments on the second floor. As I’d expected, none of the mailboxes in the vestibule bore McIntyre’s name. I rang the manager but received no response; next I buzzed the seven remaining apartments. Two people were home; neither had heard of McIntyre. None of the people working in the downstairs businesses remembered her, either; they didn’t pay too much attention to the tenants, one man told me.
I decided to turn the search for McIntyre over to Rae. Since separating from her husband, my assistant had displayed boundless enthusiasm for all sorts of routine chores. Besides, McIntyre wasn’t really central to my investigation; I only wanted to talk with her to see if she could shed some light on the unusually high level of tension that Larkey had sensed in his younger employees shortly before Tracy vanished.
I went back to the MG and considered what to do next. Leora Whitsun, Foster’s mother, was visiting relatives in Los Angeles and wouldn’t be back until New Year’s Day, when she was scheduled for duty at the Potrero Medical Clinic. There were other friends of Tracy’s I could interview-members of her improve group, for instance-but they struck me as even more peripheral than McIntyre. About all they’d be able to tell me was what kind of person Tracy had been, and I felt I already had enough of a handle on that. Besides, the Friday before New Year’s Eve was a bad time to find people at home.
I thought some more about Marc Emmons: his answering machine always being on, his abrupt departure from the club the night before. It could be he was monitoring calls, ducking me. Since his address on Potrero Hill wasn’t too much of a detour on my way home, I might as well swing by there and check for signs of his presence.
Emmons lived on Mariposa, not far from Missouri Street, in the heart of the upscale, newly trendy part of the hill. The transformation of this predominantly blue-collar, ethnically diverse area began in the seventies, when the middle class discovered its sunny weather and as yet reasonable property values. Now the neighborhood is largely mixed: renovated houses and new apartment buildings and condominium complexes are interspersed among older, shabbier dwellings; hardware stores and corner groceries and bars that have been there for generations stand side by side with patisseries and wine shops and restaurants that cater to the new element.
Emmons’s building was one of the new ones: bastardized Victorian, with skylights and decks and greenhouse windows, painted sky blue. A developer’s sign advertised one, two, and three-bedroom units, hot tub, sauna, and exercise room, plus a complete security system. I was surprised that a man who made his living as a stand-up comic could afford such a place, but then I didn’t know how much Larkey was paying him. He also might-like Tracy-have well-to-do, indulgent parents.
I rang the bell for 7A but received no response. Then I went to the security gate and peered through it at the lower-level parking area, trying to see if there was a car in that unit’s space. As near as I could tell, there wasn’t.
I was beginning to feel this wasn’t my day. Probably the best thing to do was go home and start over at Café Comedie that evening. I began driving south on Missouri, planning to take Army Street across town to my quiet little neighborhood near the Glen Park district. But before I got there, I turned east, toward the Potrero Annex housing project, where Bobby Foster had grown up.
After a few blocks Missouri curved and took a sharp downward slope, and I found myself looking at a whole other Potrero Hill. Only minutes from the luxury apartment houses with their saunas and hot tubs was a housing complex so alien from them-from most of the rest of the city-that it might have been in an alternate universe.
The two-tiered dun-colored buildings sprawled over an entire hillside. The view of the bay and the bridge connecting the city with Oakland would have been spectacular from their windows-except they were heavily meshed and barred. I stopped at a corner where a couple of burnt-out, vandalized cars stood. Farther down, against other battered and rusted vehicles, leaned small knots of black men, drinking and most likely doing drugs. A ghetto blaster stood on the hood of one of the cars, and rap music filled the air. Some kids were scrounging around among the rubble in the gutter; as I watched, one of them held up a used hypodermic syringe.
I stayed at the top of the rise viewing the war zone below-an embattled piece of turf that armed drug dealers and addicts were doing their best to wrest from the honest citizens. A few months back, San Francisco’s public housing projects had been declared “out of control” in a federal government report; a HUD official had admitted in print to being “terrified” on a tour of the large Sunnydale complex. For a time a great many solutions to the problem had been proposed; what they mainly amounted
to was shifting the responsibility from the Housing Authority to the police to the Department of Social Services, and back again. As far as I knew, few plans had been implemented, and after a while the media had lost interest in the subject. If anything had improved in the projects, you couldn’t tell it by looking at Potrero Annex.
As I sat there contemplating the despair and hopelessness trapped within those barrackslike buildings, a silver stretch Mercedes topped the rise behind me. The driver and his passenger-both young black men with eyes masked by mirrored sunglasses-looked hardened beyond their years. They weren’t pro ballplayers come to dispense New Year’s cheer to the old neighborhood; they were here to dispense death. This other, alien San Francisco was no place for me, unarmed and alone-even in the middle of the afternoon.
When I arrived home, my brown-shingled cottage on the tail end of Church Street seemed even more inviting than usual. One of the contractors I’d had in to give an estimate earlier in the week was just coming down the front steps. He wanted to check a couple of things, he said, and then he’d be able to quote me a price. The price was agreeable, and since none of the others had so much as bothered to call back, I told him to draw up a contract, and he said he could start next Wednesday. After he left, I puttered around until six, then called Café Comedie.
Marc Emmons had called in sick, Larkey told me. I dialed his home number and again spoke with the machine. Not my day, I thought, and not my night, either.
The videotape of Foster’s confession had been stuffed in my mailbox when I’d returned, but Rae had included no note. I called All Souls and talked with Ted, who said she was in the attic, mudding and taping the Sheetrock she’d put up.
“She says she wants the room finished by tomorrow night,” he added, “so she can start the year in a real room.”
The Shape of Dread Page 8
