I could understand that, so I told him not to bother her. Then I wandered around listlessly, thinking about Bobby Foster’s plight.
Capital punishment was an issue on which I felt oddly ambivalent. I agreed with the usual arguments against it: it hasn’t been proven a deterrent; it is used discriminatively against the poor and minority group members; more than a few innocent parties have been unjustly condemned and executed; and contrary to what its proponents would have you believe, most methods of execution are neither painless nor humane.
On the other hand, the sight of a bloodied, broken victim of violence called up a primal rage in me-an atavistic bloodlust that made me want to exact the proverbial eye for an eye. I’d encountered enough unrepentant killers to know that there were those who couldn’t be redeemed, certainly not in an overloaded penal system such as we have in California. I had to admit that there were instances when I’d subscribed to the just-blow-them-away viewpoint.
As of today there had not been an execution in California since 1967. In the interim, some three hundred people, including my client, had been sentenced to die in the gas chamber. Within the next couple of years the legal carnage mandated by the reinstatement of the death penalty would begin, and at that time I suspected that those of us who were undecided would quickly have our fill of retribution. In my rational moments, I abhor killing of any kind, so I knew which side of the issue I would then champion.
To take my mind off that subject I went to the kitchen and put on some leftover spaghetti to heat slowly. Then I gave in to the impulse I’d been trying to resist, and looked at the video of Foster’s confession again. That depressed me thoroughly, so I gathered together my notes and what files Rae didn’t have and went over them, paying particular attention to various “sightings” of Tracy that the authorities had investigated before the bloodstained car had turned up.
As usual in missing-persons and kidnapping cases, reports from individuals both sane and mad had poured in to the authorities. Most had been easily dismissed as mistakes or outright fabrications, but there had been two leads promising enough for the various law enforcement agencies to commit themselves to a significant number of man-hours.
A Walnut Creek woman had spotted someone strongly resembling Tracy driving a car across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge at around twelve-thirty in the morning after she was last seen at Café Comedie. The informant had taken note of her because they’d gone to school together at Foothill College prior to the woman’s marriage and move to the Contra Costa County suburb. She could say nothing definite about the make or model of the car, however, nor had she noticed if there was anyone with Tracy. East Bay authorities assisted in the search, but no tangible evidence of Tracy’s presence there ever surfaced.
Another lead backed up the sighting on the bridge. A clerk in a twenty-four-hour convenience store just off Interstate 80 outside of Berkeley identified Tracy as having stopped and bought a quantity of groceries at around one that morning. At first she’d thought she didn’t have enough cash to pay for them, and had asked if the store would accept a traveler’s check left over from a recent vacation in Hawaii (where Tracy had gone with her parents for the Christmas holidays that year). While she searched for the checks, the clerk asked her where she had stayed in Hawaii, and she named the resort on the big island where the Kostakoses had spent a week. Then she discovered she had enough cash after all, paid, and left. Together with the first lead, this one had seemed promising, but eventually the east Bay inquiry was back-burnered.
I flipped through my legal pad to the notes I’d taken on the two sightings. They both seemed significant to me, but I also had questions, such as whose car Tracy had been driving. She hadn’t owned one, didn’t like to drive. I supposed I could speak with the Walnut Creek woman and the clerk-assuming either could be located-and see if they could supply additional details, but that was an unlikely possibility, given the passage of time.
Frustrated, I grabbed another legal pad and began making a list of things for Rae to do on Monday-or more likely Tuesday, since January second was the legal holiday.
1. Ask our contact at the realty co to pull credit rept on T. Check for active in chg accts aftr date of disapp. If we have a contact at her bank (see my rolodex) check for active in accts there.
2. Call my friend at DMV & see about vehicles registrd to T. Check driving recrd for viols after disapp.
3. Call Mrs. K & get names of T’s drs, dntsts. Ask if any reqs for med recs.
4.
I stopped, chewing on the pencil top. Why on earth was I doing this? Rae knew the elements of skip tracing, had probably gotten started. All I had to do on Monday was tell her to look for Lisa McIntyre as well.
Besides, I knew skip tracing wouldn’t turn up anything on a woman as bright as Tracy. If she were alive and unwilling to be found, she wouldn’t be using her own name. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to use her charge or checking accounts. She would long ago have acquired a new identity. I would let Rae go through the motions, because it’s always wise to do so, but I was certain she would be wasting her time.
Finally I tore the list off the pad, balled it up, and tossed it on the floor. For a moment I considered reading through the notebook of character sketches I’d taken from Tracy’s room, but decided to save that for the next day. In case I was still unable to contact Marc Emmons, it would give me something to do before I had to get dolled up for New Year’s Eve.
I put the files and the video aside, then dished up some spaghetti and settled down with it and a tape of Airplane!-my all-time favorite lunatic comedy movie and cheerer-upper. After a while, my fat old spotted cat, Watney, came to sit on my lap, and together we whiled away a few more hours of the waning year.
9
The shabby brown Victorian on the hill above Mission Street was ablaze with light and awash with New Year’s Eve revelers when I arrived at nine on Saturday night. The living room chandelier and wall sconces had been turned on, and for once all the bulbs worked; a fire crackled on the hearth. I noted with amusement that someone had tried to disguise the fact that most of the needles had fallen off the Christmas tree in the window bay by draping it in extra tinsel. A bar had been set up on the big coffee table; the punch bowl would surely contain the bourbon punch for which I had long ago provided the recipe. I knew if Hank had tinkered with it, it would be doubly lethal-and that the coffee in the urn in the kitchen would be doubly strong.
The crowd was an odd mixture of All Souls clients, personal friends of staff members, pillars of the local liberal establishment, and even an occasional Republican. Across the room by the fireplace I spotted Charlie Cornish, an antiques-well, really junk-dealer who had figured prominently in the first major case I’d investigated for the co-op. He raised his punch cup to me, and I waved. On the other side of the room was my old friend Claudia James, who used to own my answering service until it went bankrupt due to the increasing popularity of answering machines. Tonight she looked prosperous in a dyed suede outfit; it seemed to me that I’d heard she was now doing something with computers.
I hurried upstairs to my office, dumped my coat and bag, then went to the hall mirror and examined my appearance. The dress had been my Christmas present to myself: red silk, long sleeved and low necked, with a slightly flared, indecently short skirt. I’d piled my hair high on my head, liberated my grandmother’s garnet earrings from the strong-box where I usually hide them, and put on a pair of high-heeled black suede pumps. All in all, it was a far cry from my usual sweater and jeans. Spiffy enough to make me feel hopeful. Maybe there would be an interesting man downstairs-one who wasn’t into Zen gun handling or death. My “soul mate”? Well, at least somebody who could be taken out in public.
Before I joined the party, I went to the kitchen to see if I could help out with the food. Jack was there, arranging a platter of cheese and cold cuts. His eyes brightened when he saw me; they moved from my face to the dress’s neckline to my legs. I gave him what I hoped was a si
sterly smile.
Ted was there, too, getting out more wineglasses and examining them for those unsightly spots. “Love your dress,” he said.
“Thank you. Where’s yours?”
“Didn’t come back from alterations in time.”
I patted the sleeve of his burgundy velvet smoking jacket. “This is more you, anyway.”
I looked for the bread knife so I could start cutting slices of sourdough, and saw Rae leaning against the stove, talking to a chubby man whom I thought held some position in the mayor’s office. She had upgraded her fashion image tonight with a silk blouse and black skirt splashed with red things that were probably supposed to be cherries. I smiled affectionately as I noted that there already was a wine spot on the blouse, and her shoes-a pair of those spike-heeled, open-toed sandals that always look tarty-were at least seven years out of date. When she saw me, she motioned for me to come over, and the man excused himself.
“You look great!” she said.
“You too.” She did-for Rae. “Did you get the room finished?”
“Sort of. It’s not painted, and I’ve still got to do something about carpet and a door, but I can start sleeping there tonight.”
“Good for you.”
Behind me Jack yelled for someone to get a move on with the bread. Rae went over to the cutting board of the Hoosier cabinet, and I followed.
“Listen,” she said, “your friend from the DMV stopped by for a few minutes a while ago. She had another party and said to tell you she’s sorry she missed you. But she brought the data I requested on Kostakos, and I put it on your desk.”
“You got her records pulled already?”
“I started the skip trace yesterday. Things were slow, so your friend was able to speed it up.”
“Anything there?”
“I didn’t have the time to look.”
“Well, thanks for getting to it so quickly.” I’d been absolutely right about not needing to make a list for Rae; she was turning into a first-rate assistant. “I’ve got another person for you to trace, but I’ll go into it on Monday. If you’re planning to work-it’s a legal holiday.”
“I’d as soon work as anything else. By then I’ll have done all I can on the room, until I get some money.”
“Good. Have you seen Hank and Anne-Marie tonight?”
A funny look came onto her face. “Hank’s in his office.”
“Where’s Anne-Marie?”
“Home.”
“Uh-oh. I better go talk with him.”
As I left the kitchen, however, a loud whoop resounded at the far end of the hall. A tall, lanky man in Levis, a leather vest, and cowboy boots charged at me, grabbed me by the waist, and swung me high off the ground. Jack, who had been following me with the plate of cold cuts, looked startled, then chagrined.
It was Willie Whelan, a longtime client. Willie had once been a fence, operating out of local flea markets, but he’d since gone legit, as he put it. Now he owned a chain of cut-rate jewelry stores, the kind that extend credit to anybody and charge usurious interest rates for the favor. He even did his own commercials, and for a couple of years now, I’d been accustomed to seeing him leering at me on late-night TV, asking, “Need credit? Come to Willie’s Jewelry Mart….”
He set me down, planted a big kiss on my forehead, and backed off to look me over. Jack scowled and tried to edge around us, with no success.
“McCone, you look great!” Willie exclaimed. “Jesus, what’s it been-two years? Three? Got no call for your services now that I’ve gone legit.”
“You look great, too. But I’ve seen a lot of you lately.”
“Yeah? How do you like those commercials? Clever, huh? The way that happened, one day my ad man comes to me and says, ‘Willie, there’s not a thing I can do for you that you can’t do for yourself. You’re a walking advertisement for the Jewelry Mart’ –this was when I only had the one store- ‘and what I want to do is put you on TV.’ Well, I thought about it. This fellow owns the Diamond Center has had a lot of success with it. So I said, ‘What the hell, let’s try it.’ And we did, and it worked, and now I’ve got seven stores all over the Bay Area.”
“Excuse me,” Jack said plaintively.
“And you know why it works?” Willie went on. “Sincerity. I love my customers, every one of them. That comes through in the ads. They come in, they got no credit, lousy credit, and I help them. Those commercials? I write them myself. None of this speechwriter crap like the politicians. I just say what I feel, and the customers keep pouring in.” he winked at me. “And so does the money.”
“Excuse me,” Jack said again.
“Say, where can I get a drink around here?” Willie asked.
“Front room.” I pointed.
“Think I’ll go grab one. We got to sit down and talk later. I want to know all about what’s going on with you.”
As Willie ambled back down the hall, Jack sighed in relief. I stepped aside so he could deliver the platter, then went to Hank’s office and knocked on the half-shut door.
Hank sat tipped back in the chair in front of his rolltop desk; the room was illuminated only by his green glass lamp; his coat hung over the head of his emaciated-looking cigar-store Indian. Recently he had begun spiffing up the office, buying the desk and the Indian. It should have been a good sign, indicating he was becoming less slovenly and taking more pride in his surroundings, but I viewed it with alarm. The improvements were a result of his spending more time there than at the flat he and Anne-Marie owned in Noe Valley. He was also spending more time at the Remedy Lounge on Mission Street, playing pinball and drinking too much.
Now I saw the scotch bottle on the desk and the glazed look that not even his thick horn-rimmed glasses could hide, and realized he was quite drunk. I came into the room, shut the door, and sat in the client’s chair.
“Happy New Year,” Hank said. He gestured at the bottle. “Want a drink?”
“You know I don’t drink scotch.”
He shrugged and poured himself some.
“What’re you doing in here?” I asked. “Why don’t you join the party?”
“Don’t care to. How’re you? I hardly ever see you anymore.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to reply that he hardly ever saw me because I didn’t spend my every waking hour at the Remedy, but I restrained myself. “I know. We’ll have to rectify that.”
“What’re you working on these days?”
“The Foster case, for Jack.”
“Jack. Jack’s a good man. He’s hung up on you, you know.”
“Jack’s at the stage where he’d be hung up on any woman who was nice to him.”
“You could do worse. Have done worse.” He paused to drink. “Greg’s here. Have you seen him?”
“Not yet.”
“He broke up with What’s-her-name.”
“So he told me.”
“You been seeing him?”
“Occasionally. But there’s nothing between-”
“Greg’s hung up on you. Always has been.”
“According to you, the whole world’s hung up on me.”
He waggled his finger at me. The motion almost tipped the chair over. He righted it with exaggerated dignity. “You’d do well to heed my advice.”
“Why are you always trying to fix my love life?”
“Somebody’s got to. You need a man of sh…substance. Solid, like Greg or Jack. Look at you.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“That’s a man-hunting dress if I ever saw one.”
“So?”
“So if I don’t take you in hand and advishe…advise you, you’ll go and fall for some yoyo like that disc jockey you just got rid of. God knows what it’ll be next. Another surfer, probly.”
I’d come in here to discuss his troubled marriage, and he’d managed to turn it into a dissection of my romantic history. “The surfer was way back in high school. Hank, where’s Anne-Marie?”
“Home. Fuck her.”
That shocked me so profoundly that I couldn’t think of a reply.
“She wants to stay home, entertain the assholes upstairs, let her. This is where I belong. Celebrate New Year’s with my friends, like always. So fuck her.”
“I realize you two are having problems-”
“Problems?” He laughed bitterly.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Will you at least come out and join the party?”
“No.”
“Hank-”
“You go out and join the party. Trample on Jack’s feelings. Snub Greg. Find a surfer and take him home and screw him, for all I care. Just leave me alone.”
I had long before learned not to try to reason with a belligerent drunk. I went.
The party was in full swing now. Voices babbled and laughed, glasses clinked, and ice rattled. I went to the living room, got some punch, and looked around for Greg. He was over by the Christmas tree, talking to a tall redhead whose expression said she was captivated by his gray-blond good looks. I felt a flash of irritation, which quickly faded when he saw me, smiled, excused himself, and made his way through the crush.
He put his hand on my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “Hi. You look great.”
“Thanks. But so many people have said that in such tones of wonder that I’m beginning to suspect I look terrible the rest of the time. How’re you?”
“Not too bad. Overworked as usual. I really had to do some finagling to get off tonight.” Someone jostled him from behind and his punch sloshed dangerously. “Why don’t we go out in the hall where it’s not so crowded?”
We weaved through the crowd, found the hallway jammed, too. Greg motioned at the stairs, and we went halfway up and sat.
“So what’s new with you?” he asked when we were settled.
“Not a great deal. I finally got the house refinanced and they’re going to start work on the new bedroom next week.”
“It’s about time. What’s your next project?”
The Shape of Dread Page 9
