To The Bone

by Neil Mcmahon

  But there were always newcomers, drugged to craziness or just not giving a shit. Confrontations were still rare, and the few times that violence had seemed likely, he had been able to head it off by opening his jacket to show his pistol. But the probability kept looming larger that a gang member with his own gun, or a junkie pulling a knife out of nowhere, was going to catch him unprepared. It was a no-win situation – if he defended himself successfully, he was probably in serious trouble with the law, and if not, he was dead – and while he hated to give in, he was thinking about moving. Growing up, he had hated the grimy industrial buildings that surrounded him, and wanted only to get away. But now they brought a strange comfort.

  He got in his Taurus, pulled out onto Howard, and headed toward Castro Street. This was where he had started as a rookie cop, in the Southern District south of Market Street, flanking the Mission. In this heat, there were a lot of people out – a little world on each street corner and several in between, interacting and clashing, hookers, gangbangers, drunks, addicts, the halt and lame and many insane: a microcosm of predators and victims.

  Larrabee had spent more than ten years wearing the SFPD's blue uniform, and another year and a half under cover. One night he had shot a particularly vicious mugger who was preying on tourists near Fisherman's Wharf. But it was dark; the mugger had managed to ditch his pistol so that it was never found; and his defense lawyer successfully argued reasonable doubt that Larrabee had shot the right man. He had been suspended without pay. He might have been reinstated eventually, but the beating he had taken at the hands of the system that he had risked his life to protect left him bitter and disgusted. Instead, he had decided to go private.

  He worked mostly alone, without the sophisticated equipment or networks of the bigger agencies. His cases were rarely dramatic; most of his income came from investigating malpractice insurance claims for a doctor-owned company called ASCLEP. This was how he and Monks had met. Monks was a case reviewer and expert witness for ASCLEP, but his medical expertise was a help in fieldwork, too, and sometimes it was good to have another body. Larrabee paid Monks back in kind when he could. Once, it had almost gotten him killed.

  But there was more to the partnership, and more than friendship. Monks fascinated him.

  Larrabee was under no illusions about himself. He was smart, but not intellectual. He cared, but that caring was tempered by a hard edge, a self-preservation instinct that kept his brain in control of his feelings. It wasn't something he had to work at. It was built in.

  But Monks – Monks was something else. He was a South Side Chicago mick who'd spent years laying his hands on damaged bodies and dealing with all the troubles that came with that. He was not shy about fighting, physically. But underneath, Larrabee sensed another quality, much harder to grasp, that showed through in glimpses. It was like some gentle thing that was trapped in a cruel cage, desperate to break free. Sometimes it came across as childlike, sweet, and clear, or hurt and incomprehending. But other times, that desperation turned destructive, even berserk, and he sensed, too, that Monks had spent a lot of his life fighting it, trying to channel that fierce energy. He had a hard time keeping going. And Larrabee, for reasons he himself did not fully understand, was determined to make sure that he did.

  The heart of the Castro District was gay and trendy. But west toward Twin Peaks, there was a more conservative maze of curving hilly residential streets that seemed to lead only to others like them. As well as Larrabee knew the city, he still got lost in there. The houses were small and set close together, not fancy, but well kept. There was a sense of watchfulness about the area.

  Tina Bauer let him into the house she shared with her partner, Bev. She was a small woman in her late thirties, bony, flat-chested, and mousy. Her hair was a neutral brown, bobbed, and she wore cat's-eye glasses. You could not call her pretty, although there was a certain girlish appeal. Bev thought so. Bev weighed over two hundred pounds, worked as the night dispatcher for a trucking company, and was insanely jealous.

  Except that she was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, Tina looked like she could have been an accountant, and in fact, she had been. But she had the sort of mind that grasped things differently than other people's, especially in the realm of electronic information. Fifteen years earlier, married, recently graduated from UC Berkeley, and working for Pacific Gas and Electric – the epitome of straight – she had figured out a way to shave a tiny fraction off of pennies of the utility's incoming revenue and deposit it in her own numbered account. The missing amounts were so minuscule individually, and spread so thin, they were barely noticed. By the time they added up enough to catch the accounting department's attention, she had accumulated several hundred thousand dollars.

  This had launched her on a road to self-discovery, starting with two years in prison. Not surprisingly, her marriage had collapsed, but she had not liked men all that much to begin with. Over the next years, she had refined her skills to the point where she could operate with near invisibility, and she kept it small-scale. Occasionally she was questioned, as when a bank discovered that funds had been electronically moved from a place they knew about to a place they did not. But nobody had been able to make anything stick.

  "What have we got?" Tina said. She was very serious and matter-of-fact. He was not sure he had ever seen her smile.

  Larrabee handed her a printout with the pertinent information about D' Anton.

  She scanned it, eyebrows rising. "You're going after a big fish."

  "Know anything about him?"

  "Just his reputation. Lifter of famous boobs and booties."

  "I want you to check his malpractice insurance company files," Larrabee said. "Pacific Doctors Mutual. Any kind of complaint or irregularity that shows up."

  "Did somebody's tits explode on an airplane?"

  "It's nothing that simple."

  "Okay," she said. "I should be able to do it tonight. Insurance company firewalls usually aren't much."

  "You want some money up front?"

  "We know where you live."

  As he was stepping out into the hall, Tina said, "Hey, Stover." She was standing with her hands on her hips, watching him thoughtfully. Her face was stone serious, as always.

  "I wouldn't mind blowing you once in a while," she said.

  Larrabee had thought that he was pretty good at turning a compliment, but this one left him speechless, twisting in the wind.

  "Don't worry, Bev's at work," she said. "But it would feel too weird here anyway. I could drop by your place."

  "That's, uh, a lovely offer, Tina. I'm incredibly flattered."

  "It's the only thing I miss, with guys. I'm very oral. Dildos aren't any good for that, I like it to feel alive. But I don't want to, you know, ask just anybody."

  "No, that wouldn't be smart."

  "You have to keep it secret. If Bev found out I even thought about it, she'd kill me."

  "I believe you." He did.

  "And you can't come in my mouth. I don't like that part."

  "I promise."

  "Yeah, and the check's in the mail," she said. "Keep it in mind."

  In fact, it was impossible not to.

  There was one more place Larrabee wanted to look at tonight, a restaurant that Eden Hale had talked about to her brother Josh. Apparently she had painted it in glowing terms – a classy establishment with an upwardly mobile clientele, a different order of business from the sorts of places where she had hung out with Ray Dreyer in her earlier life. Larrabee wondered how much time she had spent here, and if she had made any acquaintances. She had to have done something with her time, besides shopping and carrying on her affair with D' Anton.

  The place was called Hanover Station. It was located several blocks west of China Basin – another industrial building that had been abandoned as industry died. Dot-commer entrepreneurs had refurbished it and opened it at the crest of that money wave, five or six years ago. Larrabee had never been inside.

  When he walked in,
he saw that it had been turned into a single space the size of an airplane hangar, ringed by a second-story balcony for dining. The brick walls had been left uncovered, the old hardwood on the main floor refinished. The back bar was antique, cherry or rosewood. All in all, it was not bad, although the nut must have been fearsome. The room was nowhere near full now, and he suspected it was in jeopardy, with the crashing of the markets that had built it.

  He ordered a Lagavulin scotch, straight up with an ice-water back, at the bar. He paid for it with a twenty and got five back. That came as no surprise, but the drink was short. For a place that was losing business, that was the wrong direction to take. The bartender was a slick, good-looking young man, brimming with unconcealed self-admiration. Larrabee decided there was no help there for what he wanted.

  He stood and sipped, casually watching the scene. The crowd was all young, mid-twenties to thirties, well-dressed, confident, used to spending money. Two cocktail waitresses circulated among the tables. Larrabee made his choice, left his empty glass on the bar with no tip, and sat at a table in her area.

  She came over immediately. He had picked her because she didn't really fit this place – she looked like she would have been more at home in North Beach or the Haight. She was about thirty, tall, and very slender, dressed in close-fitting black, with long straight dark hair. She wore at least one ring on every finger, and many bracelets, all silver. She was quite attractive, although there was a certain Morticia Addams quality.

  "What can I get you?" she said.

  "I'd like to buy you a drink."

  She rolled her eyes. "Sorry. I work till two, and I'm going straight home. Alone."

  "I didn't say you had to have it with me." He laid a twenty-dollar bill on her tray.

  "What do I have to do for that?" she said warily.

  Larrabee handed her three photos of Eden Hale taken from the Internet, face shots with different angles and hairstyles, that he had chosen from her films. "Recognize her?"

  The waitress touched one of the photos with a long-nailed fingertip. 'There was somebody who used to come around, who looks like this. I think her name was Eden?"

  "That's her."

  "I haven't seen her for a while."

  "You won't," Larrabee said.

  The bored glaze in her eyes went away. Her mouth opened a little.

  "Have you got five minutes to talk to me?" he said.

  "You a cop?"

  "Private." He opened his wallet and showed her his license.

  She was starting to look interested. "I'll meet you out front," she said.

  He waited outside the front door. A sea breeze was springing up, and the moon was dimming behind thickening fog. There was not much traffic on the streets, but a few blocks away, the stream of headlights on the skyway of Interstate 80 was steady, an unending fuel line of human fodder for the city's guts.

  The waitress came out and stood by him, fishing nervously for cigarettes in her purse. Larrabee took her Bic lighter from her fingers and held it while she leaned into the flame, cupping her hand against the breeze. She inhaled and stepped back, crossing her arms, one hand cupping the other elbow.

  "Thanks," she said. "She's dead, that woman?"

  Larrabee nodded.

  "Murdered?"

  "It's looking that way," he said.

  She shivered. "What do you want to know?"

  "What she was like. Who she hung out with. If there was anybody in particular."

  "She was nice enough. She always came in alone, and I never saw her leave with anybody. But she got hit on a lot."

  "She was a good-looking girl," Larrabee said.

  "Yeah, but it was more than looks. There was just something about her that said 'fuck me.' I'd see the guys watching her; it was like they were back in the jungle – wanted to throw her down on the floor right there. She'd play into it, but it wasn't really even like she was prick-teasing. It's just the way she was."

  "You ever overhear her talking? Figure out her story?"

  "Just a little. She said she'd been an actress, but she was getting into modeling. There was something else, too. Wait a minute."

  The waitress put her hand to her forehead, concentrating, with the cigarette smoking between her fingers.

  "She was going to work for some famous surgeon, something like that. Seems like maybe she hinted she was going to marry him."

  Larrabee's eyebrows rose. "Marry him, huh?"

  "I think I heard that. I didn't pay much attention, really. I hear so many people talking about all the stuff they've got going, and I think, then why are you sitting in here trying to impress everybody?"

  She inhaled deeply on the cigarette, watching him. Her eyes were softer now, the early toughness gone. It was something that happened, an odd bit of psychology, like transference. People wanted to please their interrogators, to contribute something important. People who were not criminals, at least. The suggestion that Eden had talked about marrying D' Anton was a choice bit of information. But there wasn't much else he did not already know, and he doubted there would be much more.

  "One more question," he said. "How did she dress?"

  The waitress shrugged. "Like everybody else here."

  "Like a businesswoman? Not flashy?"

  "Like she'd just come from the office."

  "Did that seem strange, with her acting slutty?" She snorted with amusement. "Are you kidding?" Larrabee handed her one of his business cards. "Keep thinking about it, and ask your friends, huh? If anything turns up, give me a call."

  She reached into her purse again, head ducking as her fingers searched, hair spilling around her face. It made her look more vulnerable still. She found the twenty-dollar bill and offered it back to him. "You didn't have to give me money," she said. "Come on. I've been keeping you away from your tips."

  "I don't make twenty bucks in five minutes."

  "Neither do I," Larrabee said.

  She smiled and tossed her hair. "Maybe we should have that drink sometime."

  He left with her name, Heather, and her phone number written on another one of his cards.

  There were many available women in San Francisco, and Larrabee encountered them frequently through his work. That also gave him a romantic gloss that was more imagined than real. He got his share of come-ons, with the offer of sex usually there more or less immediately. This was fine with him, although, by his own lights at least, he never exploited it. But the need was there in him just like anybody else, particularly when he was in between longer relationships. Like now.

  The last one of those had been Iris, the stripper with the stage name Secret, who had left two years ago to dance in Vegas. At first she had come back to stay with him often, and there was a time when it seemed like the relationship could have gotten solid. But she had slipped into another world, or maybe hardened into what she was destined to be from the beginning, with the dancing giving way to hooking and drugs. He had not heard from her in a while.

  He was thinking seriously about Tina's offer. The sheer weirdness of it was intriguing, and he was reasonably sure that she wanted exactly what she said and nothing more. As for the waitress, Heather – he had been in those sorts of situations many times, and he doubted he would go for this one. The way it usually went, there would be a few nights of entertaining discoveries about each other's lives, accompanied by energetic lust. Then the unraveling would start – the realization that there were no real common interests or compatibility – and it would take its course, probably with a fair dose of pain and trouble.

  Although there would be those first few nights.

  He got into the Taurus and punched the number of D' Anton's former nurse again.

  This time, a woman answered.

  "Mrs. Pendergast? Margaret?"

  "I'm not interested. And take my name out of your computer." She sounded middle-aged, with the sharp-edged reply of someone weary of endless solicitations.

  "I'm not trying to sell you anything, Margaret. My name's St
over Larrabee. I left you a message earlier."

  "Oh? I haven't checked, I just got in."

  Larrabee was relieved. At least there was no overt hostility, yet.

  "I'm a private investigator. Calling you from San Francisco."

  "What about?" she said, cautious now.

  "About a young woman named Katie Bensen, who went missing back when you were working for Dr. D'Anton. Do you remember that?"

  There was a longish silence. Then she said, "I do. But I don't especially want to."

  "Will you give me just a minute, Margaret?" he said quickly. "So I can explain to you why you should?"

  Larrabee lowered his voice to a confidential tone, just the two of them in on this delicate and crucial matter, and plied his trade.

  Chapter 22

  Late, after midnight, you find yourself driving toward the clinic. In the past you've returned to the operating room – to linger, to replay the event, moment by frozen moment, in your mind.

  But tonight, you drive past. Things have gone very wrong: the word murder has been spoken. It's not about last night, or even the other times. It's what they think might have happened to Eden Hale.

  That Monks is prying, and that will bring the wrong kind of attention around. The thought of this – of him – sets off the old fear. You realize you've been grinding your teeth.

  You pull over to the curb and close your eyes. Concentrate.