There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of

by Marcia Muller

  I put my finger to my lips and said, “Sssh! We’ve hurt his feelings.”

  Don rolled his eyes, clasped his hand over his mouth, and tried unsuccessfully to muffle his laughter. It was several minutes before I was calm enough to get up and start making the burgers. Contritely, I made two extra, in case Barry was hungry, and cut generous slices of cheese to go on top.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By ten-thirty the Tenderloin had donned a tattered neon disguise. The lights of the bars and porno theatres and cheap hotels bathed the area in red and gold, pink and green, masking the worst of its squalor. But underneath the garish trappings, one could easily see the refuse and decay, and the alleys where danger waited.

  I parked my car in a guarded lot Carolyn had recommended and walked toward the Globe Hotel, my senses warily alert to the activity that ebbed and flowed around me. Hard-faced women—some dressed in gaudy finery, others in rags—went about their business or stood on corners waiting for it to materialize. Shabby men, their collars turned up against the biting cold, hustled along the pavement or leaned against buildings, panhandling. Winos clutched their paper-encased bottles as if they were their last fading hopes. From the bars came blaring music and drunken laughter; from the restaurants came the odor of grease, faintly underscored by the street smells of garbage and urine.

  The door of the Globe was unlocked. I hurried inside, grateful for the first rush of warm air, then stopped in surprise. On the counter where Sallie Hyde’s fake Christmas tree had stood was a small Scotch pine in a red-and-green pot. It was covered with handcrafted ornaments of the kind found in specialty stores, and an ornate gold star crowned its tip. A heavy metal chain wound around the pot. I crossed the lobby and followed the chain down behind the reception desk to where it was padlocked to one of the upright supports. Someone was taking no chances.

  And rightly so: live Christmas trees did not come cheap. I knew that from pricing them. Nor did the kind of ornaments this one was festooned with. Who, I wondered, had dispensed such largesse?

  I went over to the door of Mary Zemanek’s apartment and knocked, but received no answer. The rest of the hotel was similarly quiet, although I could hear a radio playing and a baby crying in the apartments beyond the ground-floor fire door. It was after ten-thirty, and Carolyn hadn’t arrived yet, but she’d said she might be late when I’d talked to her earlier. In her absence, I decided to reinvestigate the basement; I hadn’t given it a thorough going-over that morning, and it had occurred to me that I might have missed a hiding place.

  I was carrying a paper sack containing the olive-green sheet I’d found down there that morning, and for a moment I debated leaving it behind the reception desk. Then I decided to keep it with me and tucked it securely under my arm as I went through the fire door. As I passed down the corridor, the baby’s crying became louder. A woman’s harsh voice was raised in what I was coming to recognize as the nasal syllables of Vietnamese, and then the kind of frantic music that usually accompanies TV car chases flared up. The child either stopped crying or else its wails were drowned out by the television. I shrugged, thinking that every parent has his own way of dealing with these things.

  Inside the stairwell, the single bulb glowed dully, the green walls reflecting it murkily. I flicked the switch by the door and saw a shaft of light shine on the stairs that led to the basement. Standing still, I listened to the roar of the furnace below. The sheet of paper that Mrs. Vang had given me listing the frightening incidents hadn’t shown times for them, just dates. But now I realized the noises in the basement would have to have been confined to those hours when the furnace wasn’t in operation: otherwise, the residents couldn’t possibly have heard them.

  That was good, because it probably meant whoever was causing the trouble had entered the building during the daylight hours, when someone was likely to have seen him. Probably, I’d have to check the times the noises had occurred—if anyone remembered—and also the schedule for running the furnace.

  I started down the stairway, my hand on the metal railing. Halfway to the landing, I heard a click, and then the furnace quit. Apparently it was on a thermostat and switched off when the area around it reached optimal temperature, whatever that was. And, unfortunately, that fact negated my new theory. Still, it would be a good idea to try to pinpoint the times of the various incidents and then canvass the neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen a stranger entering the hotel.

  Now there was another faulty theory, I thought, as I rounded the corner on the landing. Why was I so sure the culprit was a stranger? Perhaps it was someone who lived right here in the hotel. The residents seemed a friendly, cohesive bunch, but so had All Souls once. The trouble at the Globe could very well be internal.

  The basement was quiet, now, except for little pinging noises form the hot metal of the furnace. It hulked in the shadows ahead of me, the orange flicker of its pilot light visible through the grille near the floor. The flame drew my eyes downward and I saw a path of liquid that had trickled along the slightly sloping ground toward the outside wall. It hadn’t been there in the morning . . .

  And then I stopped, senses sharpening as they had earlier on the street. The liquid was thick and dark, and it came from the left where the bovine boiler stood on its absurd spindly legs. Under its bulging white belly was another pair of legs—blue-jeaned, bent at the knees, feet encased in tennis shoes.

  It was a man who lay there, at the beginning of that dark liquid trail.

  I sucked in my breath and hurried over to him. He lay crumpled on his side, arm outflung around his head. One cheek was pressed flat on the floor, and a widening spill of blood spread around it. He was an Oriental, about Duc Vang’s age or younger.

  Quickly I knelt beside him and felt his neck. His flesh was warm and pliant, but I couldn’t detect any pulse from the big artery. I moved my fingers around, thinking the pulse was so faint I might have missed it. Nothing. Leaning forward, I looked at the top of his head. It was caved in, with white splinters of bone showing through the scalp.

  I drew back, balancing on my heels and then tipping into a sitting position. My breath came in short, shallow gasps. This had happened before, in the presence of other dead bodies, in other places. The hyperventilation brought dizziness, and I forced my head forward, slowing my breathing with a concentrated effort. This happened more and more, whenever I saw a human life tossed aside like so much garbage . . .

  In a moment I straightened up. I felt very cold, and the smell of death, pungent and foully sweet, was all around me. Strange I had not noticed it before.

  But then, the smell wasn’t very strong, really. And I hadn’t been expecting it. Instead I’d been looking for . . . what? Oh, yes. A hiding place.

  I scanned the room around me. No one was behind the furnace or lurking at one end of the storage lockers. I searched the concrete floor, looking for a weapon. There was nothing—no wrench, no pipe, no piece of wood—that could’ve done the damage to this man’s head.

  The furnace kicked on with a loud rumble. I jerked my head toward it, then got to my feet, stumbling over the paper sack I’d been carrying. Snatching it up, I went to the stairs and glanced back at the dead man. Nothing to do for him now. Nothing but call the police.

  My limbs felt cold and heavy as I climbed the stairs and went into the hall. Should I knock on one of these doors? I wondered. No, mustn’t alarm the residents. The lobby—there’s a pay phone.

  I ran down the hall and into the lobby. Carolyn Bui stood by the desk, looking up at the Christmas tree. She turned as I came in, and her hand flew to her mouth when she saw my face.

  “Sharon,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

  I shook my head and glanced over at the pay phone in the corner. It seemed impossible to locate a coin in my bag, much less remember the number for Homicide.

  “Sharon—”

  “Give me a couple of dimes.”

  “But what—”

  “Some dimes! Please.”

  Ca
rolyn reached into her purse and extracted the coins. I took them in icy fingers and went to the phone. She followed, pressing closer to me than I would have liked. I could feel her body stiffen as I gave the facts to the Homicide inspector who caught my call.

  When I hung up, I turned to face Carolyn. Her eyes glittered, unnaturally large in the dim light. “When did this happen?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Not long ago. He’s still warm.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know that either. A male Oriental, about Duc Vang’s age. I’ve never see him before.

  She started for the fire door, but I caught her arm. “Don’t go down there, Carolyn. Wait for the police.”

  “But I have to see how—”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t want to.”

  She regarded me for a few seconds, then nodded and came back toward the desk with me. I let go of her arm and set the paper sack—which was beginning to annoy me—next to the tree. Then I leaned back against the ledge to wait. The ends of my hair caught on one of the tree’s branches, but I didn’t bother to free them. A numbness was spreading through me, a counter-reaction to that last spurt of adrenaline that had enabled me to make my call.

  “We should tell Mrs. Zemanek,” Carolyn said after a minute.

  “She’s not here.”

  “She’s always here.”

  “Not tonight. Not when I knocked earlier.”

  “Probably she was watching TV with her headphones on. She does that sometimes.” Carolyn started over there.

  Once more I stopped her. “Don’t. She’ll raise a commotion. They’ll be enough confusion later. Wait for the police.”

  As soon as I’d spoken, two uniformed officers stepped through the street door. They asked who had called. I said I had and showed them where to go. They went down into the basement, came back. One hurried outside. The other came over to Carolyn and me. There were questions to be answered, names and addresses to be given. I felt better, having something to do.

  Then they left us along, huddled against the desk near the Christmas tree. Carolyn said, “The Vangs will be back from their restaurant soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who do you suppose that is in the basement?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I should ask to see him. Maybe I can identify him.”

  I said nothing, tired and steeling myself for what lay ahead.

  The uniformed officers returned, followed by another patrolman. Two of them went through the fire door and began knocking on the doors of the apartments off the hall. The other stood watching Carolyn and me. Soon the lab technicians would arrive, and the coroner’s men . . .

  I looked up at the door and then stood up straighter, staring at the tall blond plainclothesman who had just entered. It was my old boyfriend, Lieutenant Gregory Marcus. And for the first time in more than a year and half since we’d broken up, I was glad to see him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was after one in the morning when I let myself into the warehouse off Third Street where Don had his loft. I hurried down the echoing corridor, past a dance studio and a metal sculpture shop, and used a key in a door that was decorated with a single gold star—Don’s concession to the Christmas season. The cavernous room beyond was dark, and I flicked on overhead spotlights that illuminate a baby grand piano, a set of drums, and three walls of stereo equipment, books, and records.

  Don wasn’t there, but I hadn’t expected him to be. He was taping one of his celebrity talk shows tonight, with a band that was in town for a holiday show at the Cow Palace. Musicians being the nocturnal creatures they are, the taping had been arranged for ten o’clock, and afterwards they would all go out someplace for drinks and creative lie-telling. I didn’t expect Don until after the bars closed at two—if then.

  But I hadn’t wanted to go home, not after what had happened at the Globe Hotel. And I knew Don would arrive eventually. Right now it was enough just being there among his treasured possessions. Don is a person who leaves a great deal of himself in any place he inhabits, and I could almost feel his comforting presence. I dropped my coat on a pile of pillows on his big blue rug, then went over to the piano, running my fingers over the keys and striking middle C. The note echoed forlornly in the high-ceilinged space—forlorn, like I felt.

  The murder victim in the basement of the hotel had turned out to be Hoa Dinh, aged sixteen, eldest son of a family on the sixth floor and Duc Vang’s best friend. Hoa, Carolyn had told me, had been only ten when his family had fled Vietnam in a cargo boat with forty other people. The boat had nearly sunk and, after losing engine power, had drifted for a week on the South China Sea before help came. Hoa had then come to America by a circuitous route; had suffered fear and deprivation and uncertainty; had been shunted between two resettlement camps, where he could neither speak the language nor eat the strange, unpalatable food. In San Francisco, he had been moved in and out of three apartments, endured the rigors of English-as-a-second-language classes, and finally begun an electronics course that promised him something of a brighter future.

  He had been through all that, and then at age sixteen he’d ended up bludgeoned to death in the basement of a Tenderloin hotel.

  I left the piano and climbed to the large loft on the left-hand side, where the kitchen and eating area were. On the opposite side of the space was a smaller loft where Don slept under one of the skylights. He’d found the place in October after he’d been evicted from his apartment because his piano playing disturbed the neighbors, and it was the ideal situation for him. All the spaces in the converted warehouse were soundproofed, and even if they hadn’t been, Don’s music would not have bothered the other tenants, who came and went at odd hours, some living in the building, others merely practicing various artistic pursuits there.

  After getting myself some white wine from the refrigerator, I sat down at the oak dining table. I wanted to clear the events at the Globe Hotel from my mind; I would have liked to have drunk enough to banish the images implanted there. But that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, there wasn’t enough wine to get really drunk; and even if there had been, no amount of alcohol was going to help me. I’d never been able to turn off my mind—either at will or with booze or tranquilizing drugs—and I knew I was in for a bad time.

  When Greg Marcus had spotted me in the lobby of the hotel over two hours earlier, he’d raised one dark-blond eyebrow and said sardonically, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  I’d smiled faintly and stood up even straighter, wanting to present a controlled, professional appearance. It seemed to me that I should be getting better at handling these things, what with all the years and all the violence. But I wasn’t. I still felt sickened and I still hyperventilated, and it made me ashamed, especially when I reacted that way in front of a pro like Greg.

  As he watched my face, his eyes flickered with concern and he said, “Are you all right?” It—as well as his earlier wisecrack—was a throwback to the time we were still together, and it gave me a displaced feeling.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  He nodded. Subject dismissed. “Tell me what happened.” Now his tone was carefully neutral, his face expressionless. With a flash of relief, I realized he intended to treat me as if I were a stranger who had phoned in, and I was glad he’d adopted that attitude. It would make our dealings much easier.

  I introduced him to Carolyn and explained why she had hired me. I went over my arrival at the hotel and what I had encountered. In the middle of this, the Vangs returned and added to the confusion. Mary Zemanek emerged from her apartment to see what the commotion was and immediately began invoking the owner’s displeasure. Mr. Dinh, Hoa’s father, identified his son’s body, his pregnant wife standing by in stoical sorrow. She had, Carolyn said, lost two children on the flight from their homeland; while not inured to such loss, she could handle it better than most.

  Finally the questioning was over. The lab men departed, and the co
roner’s personnel left with the body bag. Carolyn went upstairs with the Dinhs, saying we would reschedule our meeting with the Vangs tomorrow. Greg looked at me and said, “Shall I walk you to your car?

  “You don’t have to—”

  “That’s okay.” He paused. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes. I wanted to ask you, though—can I remain on the case?”

  Faint amusement flickered in his eyes. “Would it make any difference if I told you not to?”

  “Yes, it probably would.”

  “It hasn’t in the past.”

  I didn’t want to dig up that particular bone of contention. “Look,” I said, “that was a long time ago. I’m older now; people change with the years.”

  “Don’t we.” For a moment his eyes were far away. Then he said, “Sure, stay with it. I know you’ll keep me posted on any important developments. And feel free to call me, if you need information.”

  “Thanks.” I unlocked my car door.

  He remained standing there, his hands in the pockets of his coat, blond hair gleaming in the rays from a nearby streetlight. “How have you been, anyway?”

  “Pretty good. You?”

  “The same. You still seeing that disc jockey?”

  “Yes.” I hesitated, and when he didn’t say anything more, I asked, “What about you—are you seeing anybody?”

  “Yeah, for about six months now. Nice lady, strategic planner with one of the big clothing firms. She travels a lot, but that’s all right. I never had the opportunity to get used to someone who had dinner waiting on the stove every night.”