I walked down the path a ways, looking at the side wall of the house. Helen Alvarez and her brother had done a good job of eradicating the words that had been spray-painted there, except for the shadow of a bullsh that was half-hidden behind a privet hedge.
In the adjacent yard on that side, a man in a sweatshirt had been sweeping up blown leaves that had collected around what looked like a fruit tree in the center of a winter brown lawn. He’d stopped when he saw Mrs. Alvarez and me, stood leaning on his rake for a few seconds; now he came over to the fence, carrying the rake vertically in his right hand as if bearing a standard. He was about fifty, thin, balding, long jawed. He nodded to me, said to Mrs. Alvarez, “How’s Margaret holding up?”
“Fair, Ev, just fair. She’s got it into her head that a ghost, of all things, might be responsible.”
“Ghost?”
“Her late husband come back to haunt her.”
“Uh-oh. Sounds like she’s ready to be put away for safekeeping.”
“Not yet she isn’t. Not if this man”—Mrs. Alvarez patted my arm—“and I have anything to say about it. He’s a detective and he is going to put a stop to what’s been going on.”
The neighbor gave me a speculative look. “Police?”
“Private investigator.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, and I hired him,” Mrs. Alvarez said.
“To do what, exactly?”
“I told you—put a stop to what’s been going on.”
She introduced us. The thin guy’s name was Everett Belasco.
He asked me, “So how’re you gonna do it? You got ways that the police haven’t?”
People always want to know how a private detective works. They think there is some special methodology that sets us apart from the police and even further apart from those in other public-service professions. Another by-product of half a century of fiction, films, and TV shows.
I told Belasco the truth. “No, I don’t have any special methods. Just hard work and perseverance, with maybe a little luck thrown in.” And of course it disappointed him, as it usually does.
“Well, you ask me,” he said, “it’s either bums or street punks.”
“Bums?”
“City calls ’em homeless; I call ’em bums. Drug addicts, most of ’em, live like pigs over in Golden Gate Park. Panhandle, steal, leave dirty needles lying around, destroy property all over the damn place.”
My opinion of Everett Belasco dropped a couple of notches. “Most of the encampments have been cleaned out,” I said.
“Yeah, but not all of ’em. Every day I see some bum wandering around, relieving himself right out in plain sight. Punk kids, too, Mexicans, blacks. Gangs of ’em on weekends at Ocean Beach.”
“What reason would kids or homeless people have to vandalize private property in this neighborhood?”
“They need a reason nowadays?”
“Any particular individuals you have in mind?”
“Nah. But I’ll tell you this—the neighborhood’s not safe like it used to be.” He waggled the rake to emphasize his judgment. “Whole damn city’s going to hell, you ask me.”
I quit paying attention to him, asked Mrs. Alvarez if there had been any other cases of malicious mischief in the neighborhood recently.
“Not that I know about.”
“So Margaret’s the first,” Belasco said. “They start with one person, an old lady can’t defend herself; then they move on to somebody else. Me, for instance. Or you, Helen.” He shook his head. “I’m telling you, it’s either bums from the park or street punks.”
As Mrs. Alvarez and I went on out front, I wondered if it would be worth running two or three late-night stakeouts on the Abbott home. Not me—Alex Chavez. I hate stakeouts of any kind; he doesn’t mind them. If the harassment pattern held, there was liable to be another incident fairly soon. Worthwhile, then?
No. Not with two easy ways to get onto the property, front and back. One man couldn’t watch them both, and on a pro bono case like this one, the expense of hiring a second part-time operative was prohibitive. Of course Chavez could run the stakeout alone from inside Mrs. Abbott’s house, but that wouldn’t do much good if the perp did his dirty work outside. If the situation posed a potential threat to Margaret Abbott’s safety, a single or double stakeout would be warranted and hang the cost, but I didn’t see it happening that way. All the mischief had been petty and none of it directed against Mrs. Abbott personally. If there was another incident, it would follow the same pattern as the previous ones.
Belasco’s insistence that homeless people or kids were responsible was misdirected venom and bigotry. It was true enough that the city was infested with aggressive panhandlers, chronic drunks and drug users who used the streets and parks as public toilets and sometimes destroyed both public and private property. And gang activity was rampant in the Mission and Visitacion Valley and Bayview–Hunters Point districts. But both genuine and bogus homeless pretty much confined themselves to certain sections—Market Street downtown, the Haight, the inner Mission—and the black and Latino gangs committed their acts of violence on their own turf and mostly against one another. Even those Belasco called street punks tended to be territorial, and their acts of vandalism were generally limited to spreading graffiti and breaking into parked cars.
The kind of malicious mischief Mrs. Abbott had been subjected to didn’t have the feel or methodology of homeless, gang, or teenage troublemaking. No, it figured to be calculated to a specific purpose. Find that purpose and I’d find the person or persons responsible.
Helen Alvarez lived half a block to the west, just off Ulloa. This was a former blue-collar neighborhood, built in the thirties on what had once been windswept stretches of sand dunes. The parcels were small, the houses of mixed architectural styles and detached from one another, unlike the unesthetic shoulder-to-shoulder Dolger row houses farther inland. Built cheap, and bought cheap fifty years ago, but now worth small fortunes thanks to San Francisco’s overinflated real estate market and a steady influx of Asian families, both American and foreign born, with money to spend and a desire for a piece of the city. Long time owners like Margaret Abbott and people who had lived here for decades like Helen Alvarez were now the exceptions rather than the rule.
The Alvarez house was of stucco and similar in type and size, if not in color, to the one owned by Mrs. Abbott. It was painted a toasty brown with orange-yellow trim, a combination that made me think of a huge and artfully constructed grilled-cheese sandwich. The garage door was up and a slope-shouldered man wearing a Giants baseball cap was doing something at a workbench inside. Helen Alvarez ushered me in that way.
The slope-shouldered man was Leonard Crenshaw. A few years older than his sister and on the dour side, he had lived here with her since the death of her husband eight years ago. Leonard had offered to move in, she’d told me, to help out with chores and to keep her from being lonely. If he had a profession or a job, she hadn’t confided what it was.
“Don’t mind saying,” he said to me, “I think Helen made a mistake shelling out money to hire you.”
I didn’t tell him that I was working pro bono; neither did she. “Why is that, Mr. Crenshaw?” I asked.
“Always sticking her nose in other people’s business. Been like that her whole life. Nosy and bossy.”
“Better than putting my head in the sand like an ostrich,” Mrs. Alvarez said. She didn’t seem upset or annoyed by her brother’s remarks. I had the impression this was an old verbal tug-of-war between siblings, one that went back a lot of years through a lot of different incidents.
“Can’t just live her life and let others live theirs,” Crenshaw said. “It’s Charley Doyle should be taking care of his aunt and her problems, spending his money on expensive detectives.”
Expensive detectives, I thought. Leonard, if you only knew what some of the big agencies charge for their services. And how seldom they work pro bono, or take on cases like this one.
“A heavy gambler, is he?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so. He’s too lazy and too stupid. Besides, he plays poker with Ev Belasco and Ev is so tight he squeaks.”
Crenshaw said, “You know what’s going to happen to you, Helen, talking about people behind their backs that way. You’ll spend eternity hanging by your tongue, that’s what.”
“Better than spending eternity hanging by what you’ve been overusing all your adult life.”
“Funny. You’re a riot, you are.”
“Oh, put a sock in it, Leonard.”
He didn’t put a sock in it. He said grumpily, “Telling tales about people, hiring detectives, sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong. Next thing you know, our phone’ll start ringing in the middle of the night, somebody’ll bust one of our windows.”
“Nonsense.”
“Is it? Stir things up, you’re bound to make ’em worse. For everybody. You mark my words.”
Helen Alvarez and I went upstairs, into a cluttered living room, and she provided me with contact addresses for Charley Doyle and the address of the real estate agency owned by the Pattersons.
“Don’t mind Leonard,” she said then. “He’s not such a curmudgeon as he pretends to be. This crazy business with Margaret has him almost as upset as it has me.”
“I try not to be judgmental, Mrs. Alvarez.”
“So do I,” she said. “Now you go give those Pattersons hell, you hear? A taste of their own medicine, the dirty swine.”
I didn’t go give the Pattersons hell or anything else, including the benefit of the doubt. Tomorrow was soon enough for that. It was late afternoon now, the end of my workday, and what I wanted was a hot shower, a cold beer, and a quiet dinner, in that order.
So I went home.
And walked straight into a sudden family crisis.
4
JAKE RUNYON
“Jumpers,” Abe Melikian said sourly. “God, I hate ’em, I hate ’em with a passion. They want to jump, why don’t they go jump off a bridge, jump off a building? No, they got to jump on my poor ass instead.”
Runyon made a sympathetic noise.
“As if I don’t have enough troubles,” Melikian said. “I got a bad back, I got hemorrhoids, and now my doctor says I got to have a hip replacement. I’m falling apart here. Business is lousy, and now I got another jumper trying to screw me. This Troy Madison bum loses himself down a sewer hole with the rest of the goddamn rats I’m out thirty-one point five K, and I can’t afford the loss. You understand what I’m saying to you?”
Bill had worked a few bail-jump cases for Melikian in the past and had warned Runyon he was a chronic complainer and poor-mouth. In fact, he now owned one of the more successful bail bonds outfits in the city: half a dozen employees and offices right across Bryant Street from the Hall of Justice. Healthy as a horse, too, Bill said, in spite of his usual litany of physical complaints. Right. Robust, fit-looking man in his late fifties, with a full head of dark brown hair that didn’t look dyed.
Runyon said, “I understand. You want him found as fast as possible.”
“Fast, that’s right. Before he disappears so nobody can find him.”
“What time was his court appearance this morning?”
“Ten o’clock. Soon as I found out he didn’t show, I sent one of my people over to his apartment. Gone. Flew the coop last night.”
“How do you know it was last night?”
“One of the neighbors saw him leave. Him and that skanky broad he lives with. Carrying suitcases, both of ’em.”
“What’s the neighbor’s name?”
“I don’t know; ask Frank outside. He’s the one talked to her.”
“The neighbor have any idea where they were headed?”
“Hell no,” Melikian said. “Jumpers, they’re like mimes—they don’t say a word to nobody.”
“What about Madison’s lawyer?”
“Public defender. Surprised Madison jumped, he said. Met with him two days ago, Madison promised he’d show, that was good enough for the PD. Why’s everybody frigging incompetent these days?”
“Everybody isn’t.”
“Meaning you? Better not be. I don’t know you, but I know your boss; he’s plenty competent. How come he didn’t come himself? He can’t be bothered with Abe Melikian anymore?”
“He’s semiretired. I do most of the fieldwork for the agency now.”
“Yeah? So I guess you must be okay. I’d hate to have to call in a bounty hunter. Those buggers want fifteen, twenty percent of the bond—I can’t afford to pay fees like that, put me straight out of business.”
Runyon said, “Tell me about Madison.”
“Tell you what? It’s all in that file you got there in your hand.”
“I’d rather hear it from you first.”
Melikian screwed up his face until it resembled a mournful hound’s. “A doper,” he said. “You can’t trust dopers, they’re the dregs, they’re gene-pool scum. Even the first-timers, and he’s not a first-timer—he was busted three times before this last one.”
“All for possession with intent to sell?”
“No. Just this last time for dealing.”
“Jump bail before?”
“No. You think I’d’ve put up his bond if he had? Ahh, why the hell’d he have to pick on me this time? I should’ve turned him and that brother of his down flat; that’s what I should’ve done.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why. The man asks why. I got mouths to feed and bills and salaries to pay, that’s why. I got to have a hip replacement operation, I already told you that. So what choice do I have but to serve the dregs, the scum, unless my shit detector tells me don’t do it. Only it wasn’t working with this Madison pair. The doper came across all contrite and respectful and I fell for it like he was my first client ever. Maybe my shit detector’s busted permanently along with everything else I got wrong with me. I tell you, I’m falling apart here.”
Runyon said, “His brother put up your fee. Coy Madison, is it?”
“Yeah. Coy. Coy and Troy. Some names.”
“What’d Coy say when you told him his brother didn’t show?
“He was pissed, what else? He’s out thirty-five hundred, or his wife is.”
“The wife’s money?”
“Yeah,” Melikian said. “He works in some art supply store, doesn’t earn much of his own.”
“Either of them have any idea where his brother might be?”
“He says no.”
“Or why Troy jumped bail?”
“Why? Why do you think? Figured he’d be convicted, didn’t want to do the time. Goddamn jumpers are all alike.”
“He have any other relatives?”
“No.”
“What about friends?”
“Dopers like that, they don’t have friends, they just have customers.”
“He’s got at least one,” Runyon said.
“Yeah? Who?”
“The woman he lives with.”
Melikian managed to half-curl his upper lip. “Her. What the jumper sees in her I can’t imagine, unless she does something fancy in bed. Looks like she’s been dragged a few times behind a Muni bus. Older than him, must be thirty-five.”
“What’s her name?”
“Jennifer Piper. Another doper. She got caught in the same bust, but the cops didn’t hold her. Not enough evidence she was dealing, too.”
“Where’ve they been living?”
“Apartment on Valencia. Address is in the file.” Melikian’s voice was edged with impatience now. “Everything else you need is in the file. So how about you get moving instead of sitting here asking me questions, find that goddamn jumper so I don’t lose my thirty-one point five K.”
“I’ll do my best.�
�
“I don’t want to hear do your best. You think my doctor’s gonna give me a hip replacement I tell him I’ll do my best to pay him for it? Results, that’s what I want. That damn jumper back in jail where he belongs, that’s what I want.”
Runyon had nothing to say to that. He’d learned long ago that you didn’t argue with clients or respond to less than reasonable demands from the aggressive ones like Melikian. You just nodded, said you’d be in touch. And went away to do exactly what you’d said you would—your best, always.
In his car he went through the printout of the Madison file. There were two pics of Troy Madison in addition to the usual bio sheet, one the booking photo from his latest arrest, the other a head-and-shoulders snap probably taken by one of Melikian’s employees. Skinny kid at five ten, 160 pounds. Long reddish hair, scraggly beard, pockmarked cheeks—not much to look at, but memorable enough once you’d seen him. Runyon slipped both photos into his jacket pocket.
The two brothers had been born in Bakersfield, Troy the younger by two years—twenty-eight now. Both parents deceased and no living relatives except an eighty-five-year-old grandmother in a Visalia nursing home. Never married. Mechanic by trade, also worked as a truck driver. Current address: 244 Valencia Street. Arrested four times on narcotics charges over the past seven years, all in San Francisco—three for possession of methamphetamines and crack cocaine, the recent intent-to-sell bust made outside a Mission District nightclub by two undercover narcs. The possession charges had resulted in a couple of slaps on the wrist and one six-month stay in the county jail; the current bust involved sufficient amounts of meth and crack to land him in Folsom if he was convicted. Melikian’s shit detector had malfuctioned where Madison was concerned, all right. Prime jumper candidate from the get-go.
Madison’s brother, Coy, and his wife lived on 19th Street. He was manager of Noe Valley Arts & Crafts Supply on 24th; Arletta Madison was a self-employed sculptress, either one of the few successful artists of that type or she had money of her own that her husband wasn’t privy to without permission.
Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels) Page 3
