Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

by Daniel Hecht

  She didn't turn around immediately. Instead, she let him stop on the porch stairs, let him realize he had to lock up after her and that back in the driveway her car was blocking his; he couldn't go anywhere until she did. The dramatic exit routine wasn't going to work.

  She waited until she heard his lighter ratchet and caught the whiff of tobacco, then turned and joined him. He looked rumpled and spent as he leaned against the marble railing and blew smoke at the darkening sky.

  She patted his lapel and tugged his tie straight. "If we're done here," she said, "what about dinner? You must know the good places. I could eat a horse."

  4

  CREE HAD BOOKED a room on the long flat stretch of Lombard Street, at the northern edge of the city, which had the double advantage of being only eight blocks from the Pacific Heights house and far enough from North Beach or downtown to have affordable rates. Bert followed her to the motel and waited as she registered and dropped off her luggage, then drove her over to Chinatown, where he used his police status to park in a loading zone near the restaurant. Being alone in the dark car with him felt awkward; neither said much. The same at dinner.

  The restaurant had Formica tables and a greasy look to the walls and counters—somehow, Cree had expected some flourish from Bert, welcoming her to his town by taking her someplace special. But the food wasn't bad. He knew what to order and they both put away mountains of pork with mustard greens, chicken with peanuts, ginger beef. Chopsticks looked like toothpicks in Bert's big fists, but he worked them effectively, lifting his plate and levering food into his mouth just like the Chinese clientele.

  She threw a few conversational initiatives at him, but he didn't do much with them and she didn't really know what to say, either. After their fight at the house, everything was a little forced, an undertone of caution and apology.

  The only time things moved along was when she asked him for suggestions about historical research resources. Bert talked and ate at the same time, gesturing with his chopsticks to make a point. He began by outlining how a John Doe investigation went. You came at it from two sides, in this case Skobold getting information from the bones while Cree handled the historical side; the two halves of the investigation supported each other and could provide leads for each other.

  "Obviously, on our side, we got the house, when it was built, who owned it, when. Then we got the owners. We find the 1906 owner's name and follow them down, see what happened to them—births and deaths, check on descendants alive today who might have letters, diaries, records of some kind."

  "And then there's the wolfman himself," Cree suggested. "He would have stood out from the crowd—maybe there'll be reference to an extremely deformed individual in medical literature or hospital records of the period."

  "Sure. And freak shows. Or circuses, big entertainment back then. Be sure to check old handbills. And newspapers, even the ads."

  One of the problems, Bert warned, was that San Francisco's history before 1906 was full of holes. After the quake, the city had burned for three days in the biggest urban fire in American history. Most records had literally gone up in smoke.

  "Which could explain why he was forgotten," Cree mused. "Or wasn't noticed."

  "Or was so easy to dispose of." Bert flipped another piece of pork into his mouth, chewed, and went on: "And there's another reason why it can be hard to find stuff from that period. May not apply to this guy, up there in a wealthy home in that district, but given what he was, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a connection. San Francisco has what you might call a colorful history. I mean, there's an off-the-record subculture in every town, but back in the wolfman's lifetime this was like half the city. I'm talking about the Barbary Coast." His eyes scouted Cree's.

  The name rang a bell, but Cree puzzled over the connection. "In Africa?"

  "Yeah, they called it after the west coast of Africa, where the slavers worked out of, pirates and all that." Bert tapped a cigarette out of a pack, thumbed his lighter, and blew a plume of smoke over his shoulder at the No Smoking sign. "But here, it was, like, a . . . a red-light district, a warren, a whole underworld, catered to sailors just off the boat and gold miners and every kind of lowlifes. You gotta remember, this town was built on the Gold Rush, basically a hundred thousand horny, rough and tumble guys, hardly any women at first except the boatloads of whores they brought in. Barbary Coast was where they went to spend their money if they did find gold, or to make a living hitting people over the head if they didn't. Drinking, gambling, opium, slave-trading, crime syndicate stuff, wholesale prostitution. I mean, we're talking sex shows, kids for sale, murder for hire, gang wars. Make your hair stand on end to hear what went on. Point is, everything was under the table, so records of births, deaths, property sales, stuff like that, aren't so good. For like fifty years, a big chunk of San Francisco's life was underground. Chinatown, too, the Chinese didn't connect with the whites and vice versa. Oil and water, a whole separate world. People came and went, lived and died, no trace. If our wolfman connects back to the Barbary Coast or old Chinatown—" he made a hopeless gesture with the fat fingers that pinched his cigarette.

  Bert's exposition seemed to have tired him. He looked around at the restaurant with a distant frown, and Cree wondered if he felt he'd talked too frankly around a "little lady."

  "Uncle Bert," she said deliberately. "I believe you when you say you don't believe in ghosts. I can deal with that, I deal with it all the time. And for all I know, there aren't any ghosts involved here. But the question I have is, are you going to listen to me if I come up with something about the wolfman through . . . my other means?"

  "As long as I get something concrete, what do I care?"

  "I'll need access to the house. A key. Permission from the owners for me to enter."

  "What're you going to do—go have a midnight seance?"

  Again, his skepticism sounded uncomfortably like contempt, and Cree bounced a little back at him: "Like you said—what do you care? It's about results." She heard Brooklyn creep into her accent, and thought: Already.

  Bert hunched, eyes down, thinking. After a while he fished in his pocket and came up with a handful of keys. He selected one and slid it across to her, but kept a big forefinger on it.

  "One condition," he said. "Don't tell anybody what you're doing, what you do for a living. I mean nobody, not Horace, nobody. Anybody asks, you're a just a regular PI. Or a historical researcher from a university. I'd like to keep some professional dignity here. Go out with my reputation intact."

  He didn't take his finger off the key until she agreed.

  The transaction made things tense again, and conversation stalled once more. They finished dinner and drove through thickening fog back to the motel. Bert wrote out his cell-phone number on another scrap and said he'd call the house's owners. They didn't hug or even shake hands when she got out, just You take it easy now and Bert putting his hand to the side of his head with thumb and little finger spread, Call me. And then his car was sliding away, pushing a cone of headlight glow through the fog.

  It was only eight-thirty but it felt later to Cree. Long day. She checked herself in the wall mirror and rolled her eyes at what she saw. She unpacked and brought her toiletry case to the bathroom, where she ran the tap until the water was scalding, then wet a wash cloth and held the moist heat against her face. After a few minutes, she brushed and flossed her teeth. A hot facial massage and clean teeth guaranteed a 10 percent improvement in mood, minimum.

  Back in the bedroom, she opened her laptop on the desk and started pecking in a few notes. Following the example of Joyce's case management methods, she started a contacts file to cache information on people and organizations that could be research resources. She created a file for the wolfman himself and another for the house, and typed in what she'd learned so far: a few details about the bones, not much on the house.

  Finally, she started a new folder for the journal of her investigative day. This had always been a crucial part of her pr
ocess, a place to write and organize notes on her talks with the living people she met, the progress of strands of inquiry, any thoughts or ideas at all. Most important, it was where she recorded the detailed narrative of her experiences at the site, whatever she glimpsed of the world of the ghost or ghosts, observations on her own state of mind and the psychological states of others. It all made a record that she could look back at and sift for new ideas, patterns, hidden threads of continuity.

  She typed for a while, mainly noting questions about Bert, her sense of the house. It took only a few minutes.

  By the time she closed the computer, she felt decidedly blue and lonesome. She went to the window and pulled aside the drape only to see that the fog now wrapped the motel, so thick that she could barely see the cars in the courtyard just below. Foghorns moaned out in the bay, some far, some near, blind ships calling to each other like lost souls.

  Why so lonesome? Part of it was that coming to San Francisco, being with Bert, had awakened memories—Pop, mainly, so long dead, and the early, early days. Part of it was Uncle Bert himself, so different from the outgoing, fun, romantic guy she remembered. Now he was enclosed, unapproachable. He was tough and could no doubt handle hard situations, everything that came with his job. But he was so alone. Maybe if you were a career homicide cop and had seen too many awful things, you got secretly scared of human beings, disappointed with them or sad about them. So the way you survived was to never rely on anybody or anything, never get too close, and so never be disappointed. Give it thirty-some years, and Cree could easily see how you'd wall yourself off.

  Yet here was Cree Black, pretty damned alone herself. A career as an empathic parapsychologist, half your life spent in a world most people didn't even believe existed, also did a good job of isolating a person.

  Two months ago she would have called Paul Fitzpatrick in New Orleans and taken some comfort from the sound of his voice and the memory of being with him, intimate talk and walks along Lake Ponchartrain and the reassuring grounding of physical contact. But that was best avoided right now—pending "review," as she'd told Uncle Bert.

  Paul was a genuinely nice man. Too nice. She believed him when he said he was in love with her, but she'd always known he wasn't really over his divorce. Or his ex-wife, who had recently returned to New Orleans and had been making reconciliation overtures. To a kind, sensitive guy who didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings and so needed "some space," "some time to think things over."

  Oh, one of those, Joyce said when she'd told her. Joyce had a certain way of putting the behavior of men in perspective.

  But Cree suspected Paul's need for space had other origins: She'd scared him away. He'd come a long way toward her, but she had no doubt her unusual outlook on life and psychology was still a bit more than he could swallow. He had been candid in expressing his reservations about her willingness—an unhealthy compulsion?—to put herself in situations of mental and physical danger.

  She thought of calling Joyce, to check in on how her mother was doing and to ask advice about historical research, but then remembered it would be almost midnight in New York, too late to call. She could salve her lonelies by checking in with Dee, too, and at some point she really should call Mom and ask some questions about Bert.

  Who is this guy, Mom?

  It wasn't that Bert's explanations were so bad. Maybe it was just as he said: He thought the poor guy deserved at least a token effort, a name on his tombstone; he didn't have the time himself but he wanted to help his friend Horace get supporting data on this unique specimen. It could also be that Bert was feeling old and lonely and scared of retirement and had grabbed at an excuse to reconnect with the Black family.

  Or there was some other element here, some other agenda. She was ready to believe him when he said he didn't believe in ghosts, but he had taken serious evasive maneuvers when she'd asked about werewolves.

  She found herself at the window again, staring at nothing much through the fog. She was tired, but she didn't feel sleepy Parapsychological researchers became by necessity somewhat nocturnal, but that wasn't the only reason. Blue as she was, she had to smile at how predictable her responses were. The wolfman had awakened that feeling she knew so well, and enjoyed: that hunger to know, to understand. Who was he?

  Daytime was not good for her empathic process, and anyway the house would be full of carpenters and their noise, so her days were best devoted to conventional historical research. She'd begin that work tomorrow, but tonight a visit to the house was in order. It was generally wise to get off to a running start on these things.

  5

  BERT CRUISED SOUTH on Divisadero, feeling weary and heavy, unhappy with himself. He lit a cigarette, but it didn't offer much comfort. He was tired enough to go straight to bed, but when he pictured turning on the lights in his house, seeing the familiar paneling and the shag rug and the unmade bed with the deep impression of his own body in the middle, he knew he wasn't up for it. Instead of turning right on Market, he cut over toward downtown and the Tenderloin Club. He assigned himself a limit of four tonight.

  He pulled up in the loading zone, got out, and beeped the doors locked. Inside, the bartender was the new gal, a skinny woman with a narrow but friendly face, who he'd seen a couple times before. She was probably about forty, but she dressed younger, tight jeans and a blousey white shirt rolled to reveal stringy, muscled forearms. She lifted her chin to him as she tapped someone's beer. The Tenderloin Club wasn't a great place, but it was unpretentious, a basic bar that saw to the comforts of its regulars. Once it had been one of the main police hangouts, but over the years the cops had drifted elsewhere. Now the customers were mostly younger guys from the DA's office and lower-level city administration who came because it wasn't that far from City Hall. There were only six or eight other drinkers tonight.

  Bert told the bartender a Johnnie Walker straight up and another in a few minutes, she could bring it over. He waited for the first and took it and a glass of water over to a booth along the wall, where he sat beneath a dusty marlin and tasted the whiskey carefully. You could toss them back and then you didn't think you'd had much because it wouldn't start hitting you until you'd done more than you should, so he'd been working on drinking a little and giving it time before taking some more. That, and spacing it with water.

  A regular health nut, Bert thought.

  He took the cardboard coaster from his water glass to use as an ashtray and set his cigarette pack and lighter next to his drink. All lined up and ready. He lit up and savored the first draw, one of the last percs still granted cops at the Tenderloin.

  Over at the bar, the bartender had put glasses down in front of a young couple, a guy of about thirty and a plump girl a little younger. The bartender leaned over and the three of them talked about a book they had open on the bar, laughing, paging through. Passing the time.

  Bert took a sip of water, then drew squiggles in the wet ring the glass had left on the table.

  Cree: She'd turned out better-looking than he'd expected. As a kid, she'd been homely, small and so sensitive or fragile-looking you worried you'd hurt her when you roughhoused, or if you said the wrong thing. Now she was a shade over medium height, and though she still had that sensitivity she had a gutsy quality, too, like she'd been through some hard stuff and knew she could survive it. She also had a good figure, though she didn't dress to make the most of it, nice reddish-brown hair, high cheekbones, eyes that probed but not in a judging way, just curious or maybe concerned. All in all, it amazed him that she hadn't remarried. Any guy with half a brain could see that she was a keeper. Somebody's soul mate.

  She had a habit of meeting your eyes and not looking away, and you got the sense she could see through bullshit. But there was another thing in her face, a slightly stricken look. Somewhere along the line, maybe when her husband had died, or maybe when she'd had her "paranormal" experience, life had given her the big scare, the big ouch. Everybody got it sooner or later. She could play tough, but she w
asn't good at it. He figured her for one of those people who desperately wanted to believe human beings were at bottom good, and who was therefore continually being disappointed.

  He'd downed the rest of the whiskey when he wasn't noticing. Over at the bar, the new gal had her head together with the young couple, wasn't paying attention, so he hoisted himself up, carrying the glass with him, and bellied up to the rail.

  "Sorry," the bartender said. "Johnnie Black coming up." She spun to the shelves against the mirror, found the bottle. She filled to the shot-line and kept going right to the top. Bert lifted it carefully, kissed the rim, drank it down a bit.

  "What's the book?" he asked.

  "Names," the guy said. By way of explanation, the plump girl flashed the cover at Bert: Name Your Baby. A shy smile, and Bert put it together.

  "Congratulations," Bert said. He raised his glass to them, and they all clinked. The girl was wisely drinking soda water. Bert had brought his cigarette but now pinched it out, the secondhand smoke thing. "Boy or girl?"

  "We don't know yet. We're looking at both. So far we've made no progress at all. But we've still got three months."

  "Every name comes from somewhere and has meanings," the bartender explained. "You can't believe it. My name is Amy, so . . ." She looked expectantly at the young man, who obligingly paged through and found it.

  "Urn, 'Amy' . . . English, Old French. Means 'loved.''

  Bert glanced at the bartender. "So—would you say it's proved accurate?"

  She made a pursed-lipped, mind-your-own-business smile. "Off and on."

  Bert offered a little toast to that. The first one was coming on now and he felt more sociable.

  "Mine's Alexandra," the girl confided. "Means, let's see . . . English, from Alexander, means 'defender of men' or 'warding off men.' " She laughed, patting the top of her bulging stomach. "I sure haven't done a very good job of that, have I? The warding off part."