Pier 28, the closest of the two addresses Barney Rivera had given me, was just south of the closed-off section of the Embarcadero between Mission and Folsom, where the double-decked Embarcadero Freeway extension curves inland from the waterfront. The freeway structure also suffered damage in the October '89 quake, most severely in that two-block area; it, too, has been closed to traffic since, its unstable decks shored up with wooden platforms, while the city makes up its mind to rebuild or knock the whole thing down. Congestion had come to the area when Bayside Village, one of the new downtown condo complexes, went up across from Pier 28 a while back; now, with the blocked street and detours, traffic was perpetually snarled and parking was at a premium. I had to leave my car well up on Bryant, in the shadow of the Bay Bridge approach, and hoof it three blocks to the pier.
Holloway & Company, Marine Electronics, was a small, weathered building tucked in between the main pier warehouse and the funky Boondocks Restaurant. A sign on its front said they specialized in ship-to-shore radio telephones, depth sounders, fish finders, speed and wind instruments, and Loran navigational equipment. Inside, I found Lloyd Holloway in a cluttered alcove that served as his office. He was a cheerful, balding man about my age, friendly and cooperative.
"Sure, I remember the woman from Intercoastal," he said. "Haas, is it? She wasn't here more than half an hour. Approved our claim right off", didn't have any reason not to. One look at those pipes in our warehouse and the ruined stock, anybody could see we were entitled to damages."
"Did you deal with her yourself, Mr. Holloway?"
"I did. Nice polite young woman."
"She talk to anyone else while she was here?"
"No, just me. How come you're asking? She in some kind of trouble or something?"
"Just a routine investigation. One more question and I'll be on my way. What time of day was she here, do you recall?"
"Sure. Right after lunch. One o'clock."
One down, one to go . . .
China Basin Street is on the waterfront a mile or so south of Pier 28, between Third Street and the bay. This section used to be one of the hubs of the city's marine commerce; now it gave bitter and graphic testimony to the port's deterioration. There were still a few small shipping companies in operation here, and a handful of marine outfitters and engineering firms; and over at the big dry docks and repair yards at Mission Rock Terminal, half a dozen freighters were being attended to. But the atmosphere was nonetheless one of abandonment and decay. Portions of the old, rotting China Basin piers had been buckled and cracked open by the quake, but even before that they had sat unused except as perches for flocking gulls; now they were separated from the street by fences plastered with DANGER—KEEP OUT signs. On the inland side, the network of Southern Pacific spur tracks that had once serviced the piers were rusting and weed-choked. Hulks and pieces of boats were strewn about, in and out of the water, shorn of everything of value by the owners of the salvage yards that proliferated along this end of the waterfront. Parked along the street were scabrous cars and vans crammed full of personal belongings— the temporary domains of some of the city's homeless.
Savarese Importing was a perfect match for its surroundings. It sat by itself between a salvage yard and one of the venerable private boat clubs that have inhabited the basin for decades—an old two-story warehouse with a slanted sheet-metal roof, sheetmetal siding, and a wood-and-tarpaper facade reduced by fog and wind to a warped, pocked gray. A black iron fence enclosed a parking area in front; behind the building was a stubby pier that seemed to have survived the October temblor more or less intact.
It was colder here than it had been at Pier 28, with nothing on either side of the warehouse to deflect the wind that came knifing in across the bay. The odor of brine and fish was sharper here too. I didn't waste any time going through the unlocked gate and across the parking area and into the warehouse.
Gloomy place, illuminated by wire-shaded bulbs hanging at the ends of long drop cords. Along the entire north wall and part of the rear wall was an ell-shaped second floor that took up about half of the interior; the other half was open all the way up to the girdered roof. The front third of the ell wall had windows cut in it so that people upstairs could look down at what was going on below. A rickety-looking staircase led up there. Straight ahead I could see a shipping counter, the rear loading doors, stacks and pallets of wooden crates and cardboard drums with Chinese characters stencilled on them. The brine smell was in here, too, mixed with odors of creosote and mold. So was the cold. The warehouse temperature wasn't more than a few degrees above the temperature outside.
A couple of men were working at the rear, one of them piloting a midget forklift; a third man, bundled in coat and sweater and cap, stood leaning on a hand truck nearby. Killing the last few minutes until quitting time, I thought. It was almost five o'clock.
I went over to the idle one. He didn't strike me as a likely candidate for Grady Haas's mystery man—middle-aged, not particularly good-looking, not particularly bright if his expression was an accurate barometer—but I asked him about her anyway.
"The insurance broad, yeah," he said. "Nice hair, okay face, but not much in the tit department. Cool, too—one of them iceberg types, you know what I mean?"
"Did you talk to her?"
"Nah. Why should I?"
"Who did talk to her?"
He shrugged. "Just the boss, far as I know."
I asked him if Vernon Savarese was around and he said upstairs in the office, just go on up. I started away, paused, came back, gestured at the cluttered floor space, and asked if he minded telling me what it was they imported from Taiwan. He didn't seem surprised at the question. Curiosity ran shallow in him—almost as shallow as his stream of consciousness.
"Party crap," he said.
"How's that again?"
"You know, kids and adults have a party, they want party crap. Paper hats, noisemakers, confetti, birthday candles— crap like that. Used to be people wanted it, anyhow. Not so much these days."
"Business slow, is it?"
"You said it, man. We got crap here we can't give away. Sign of the times, you know what I mean?"
"Not exactly."
"The freakin' government," he said. "Who wants to buy party crap, have parties, when he's got the freakin' government on his ass about taxes all the time?"
I left him contemplating his sociopolitical theories and went up the narrow staircase to the second-floor ell. The office was at the front, a one-room, windowless enclosure behind a fire door; the rest of the ell seemed to be more cluttered storage space. There were two people in the office, a thin birdlike woman and a fat, dark-haired guy in his forties wearing red suspenders over a green-striped shirt. The fat man turned out to be Vernon Savarese. He let me have a glad-hander's smile until I presented him with one of my business cards; then he scowled so hard his thick eyebrows seemed to fold down into the bridge of his nose.
"A detective?" he said. "What's a detective want with me?"
I told him what it was I wanted. His scowl faded and his jowly face reshaped itself into relieved lines; he made a rumbling sound that I supposed was a laugh.
"Jeez," he said, "you had me going there for a minute. I thought maybe my ex-wife was trying to hassle me again. Blood out of a turnip, for Chrissake. Take your last goddamn dime if you let 'em."
"Nothing like that, Mr. Savarese. You do remember Grady Haas?"
"Sure, sure. The damaged-shipment claim."
"You dealt with her yourself, is that right?"
"Who else? It's my company, my name's on the policy."
"How long was she here?"
"Hour, maybe a little more."
"Did she talk to anyone else besides you?"
"Anyone else?"
"One of your employees. Or somebody who happened to be here at the time."
"Well . . . Mabel over there. My bookkeeper."
"Just you and Mabel?"
"That's it. How come you want to know that?
"
"It pertains to my investigation. Just routine."
"Yeah? Doesn't have to do with the claim, does it?"
"No, it doesn't."
"What I mean, she approved it," Savarese said. "Not the full amount, but hell, I expected that. That's not gonna change, is it? I'm still gonna get the money?"
"I can't answer that, Mr. Savarese. I don't work for Intercoastal Insurance."
"Yeah, right, so you said. Not for Intercoastal and not for my ex-wife. Who do you work for?"
"I can't answer that either. Thanks for your time."
"Sure, no problem. You find out what you wanted to know?"
"No," I said, "not yet."
Two down, none to go. Grady Haas evidently hadn't met her mystery man at either of the claim sites she'd visited on April Fools' Day. Which meant that she might have crossed his path at lunch somewhere, or bumped into him on the street, or met him in dozens of other ways and places. So? So.
How do you go about tracing the movements of a close-mouthed loner on a day three weeks gone?
Chapter 7
I drove back to Twenty-first Street, to see if I could pry Todd Bellin out of his flat and some information out of him. But leaning on his doorbell got me exactly what it had earlier: nothing. The only difference was that this time the muslin drapes stayed tightly drawn when I walked away and for the ten minutes I sat watching them from inside my car.
Getting on toward six o'clock by then. I took the car up to Mission and out toward Geneva, to a Mexican restaurant I know that serves a fine carne asada, made with a cream and sweet-onion sauce. It's a high-calorie, high-cholesterol dish, but I was in a mood to indulge myself tonight. Besides, I'd kept my weight down for over a year now, ate sensibly ninety-five percent of the time and maintained a regular exercise program. A little treat now and then is what makes life worth living. It also provides a measure of guilt, which makes you work twice as hard afterward to offset any damaging effects it might have . . . and if that wasn't a pretty fair rationalization for an occasional face-stuffing, it would do until a better one came along.
The carne asada was as good as ever; so were the salad and chile relleno and refried beans that went with it. At seven-fifteen, feeling fat and guilty, I drove back to Twenty-first Street for one more pass at Todd Bellin.
There was light showing now behind the drawn drapes of his flat. Or there was until I pulled up down the block and cut the engine; then the window over there went dark.
Hunched up against the night wind, I hurried across the street. But not to his building—to the one next to it. A tunnellike driveway passed under that one, into a courtyard parking area. One pace inside the tunnel, up against the wall, and I was in thick shadow; but I could still see the front of Bellin's building. He might have switched off his front-room lights because he was moving into another part of the flat. Then again he might be going out somewhere, in which case I was now in a good position to brace him when he showed.
Three or four minutes passed. The tunnel was not much shelter against the wind that came whipping through from street to courtyard, making my ears burn. It also carried the aroma of somebody's Mexican cooking, which made my stomach ache and produced a couple of unsatisfactory belches. I thought: Hell, he's not going to come out. He's forted up in there for the night.
So then, in the perverse way of things, I heard his door open. And a couple of seconds later I saw the dark shape of a man lean out from the vestibule.
He looked upstreet first, which gave me time to ease a half-step deeper into the shadows. It was another few seconds before he ventured onto the sidewalk, moving in the opposite direction from where I was in a stride that was oddly stiff" and jerky, as if he was injured in some way and hurting. I came out of the tunnel after him, walking soft. He didn't go far, just to where a car—a light-colored compact of some kind—was parked under a flickery streetlamp fifty feet away. The driver's door was locked; he bent to it, awkwardly, to use his key. I quit trying to be stealthy and quickened my pace.
When he heard me coming I was only a few paces from him. He wheeled around, in movements that were almost spastic, and the look on his face surprised me: it was one of stark terror. I heard his keys jangle as they hit the sidewalk. If he hadn't lost his grip on them he might have tried to run; as it was he stood frozen on the edge of flight, one hand up in front of him as if warding off a blow.
By then I was close enough for a second surprise: The left side of his face was bruised, lacerated; a two-inch scabbed cut ran up his cheek from the corner of his mouth, pulling his lips out of shape. Around his neck was the kind of brace you wear when you've suffered whiplash or cartilage damage.
"Mr. Bellin? Todd Bellin?"
He shook his head, but it wasn't the name he was denying. "Who are you?" he said in a thin, cracking voice. "What do you want?"
"To talk to you, ask you a few questions."
"About what?"
"Your relationship with Grady Haas—"
He reacted as violently as if I'd thrown a punch at him. He stumbled back against the car, braced himself against it with both arms thrust up and out like a man about to be crucified. "Oh God," he said, "leave me alone, don't hurt me again."
"I'm not going to hurt you. Take it easy."
He didn't seem to hear that; he was listening to the voice of his own terror. "I don't know where she is, I swear to God I don't know!"
I wanted to shake him, but that was not the way to get him calmed down; if I put my hands on him he was liable to start screaming. Instead I backed off" a step, said his name twice, softly. Then I said, "Listen to me. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not the person who hurt you before. You understand?"
He heard that, I thought, but he didn't believe it yet.
"I'm a detective," I said. "Working to help Grady." I got my wallet out, doing it slow so as not to panic him, flipped it open to the Photostat of my license and held it up in front of his face. There wasn't enough light for him to see the license clearly, but I thought the gesture itself might be enough. "See? A detective, Mr. Bellin. Trying to help Grady. I don't mean you any harm."
He stared at the Photostat, or in the direction of the Photostat—not moving his head or his eyes. Then, all at once, his muscles relaxed and he sagged so heavily against the car that he had to grab hold of the door handle to keep from falling down. I could hear his breath rattling in his throat.
I bent, picked up his keys, held them out to him. His fingers, when he finally took the keyring, were as wet as if he'd dunked them in water. I said, "Let's go inside and talk. Unless there's someplace important you have to go. . . ."
"No," he said, "no, I . . . some food, there's nothing left to eat."
"You can go shopping later, all right? After we talk."
". . . All right."
He pushed away from the car. He was wobbly on his pins but I still didn't touch him; I backed off and walked alongside him, not too close, to the vestibule of his building. I hung back there, too, on the sidewalk, so as not to crowd him in the tight dark space. He had some trouble getting his key into the door lock. When I heard the latch click I moved ahead, just in case he had some idea of trying to rush inside and slam the door between us. But there was neither aggression nor defiance in him. He flipped on a light, revealing a narrow stairwell and a set of carpeted stairs, and without touching the door or looking back at me he started up—both feet on each step, leaning on the handrail like an old man.
I shut the door, went up after him. At the top was a short hallway; he put on more lights, turned left and entered the front room with the drawn muslin drapes. Living room, not too big, dominated by electronic equipment: stereo, CD player, tape deck, speakers, TV and VCR. He sank onto a lumpy plaid couch and folded his hands together and held them tight between his knees. On an end table near him was an 8 by 10 color photograph of two people smiling at each other in a moderate closeup; he was one, Grady Haas was the other. Displayed as it was, the photo told me that his feelings for he
r still ran deep.
I sat on the edge of a chair across from him. His head was bowed; he didn't seem to want to look at me. He was about thirty, blond, pale, slightly built inside the bulky pea jacket and chinos he wore. Not particularly attractive, but there was a boyish, ascetic quality to the arrangement of his features that a certain kind of woman—Grady Haas's kind—would find appealing.
Somebody had done a job on him, all right, somebody who knew how to inflict pain without breaking bones. Working on just the one side of his face and the neck area, concentrating the hurt. Three, maybe four days ago, I thought. The discoloration from the bruises was starting to fade a little, there was no longer any swelling around the blackened eye, and the cut at the corner of the mouth was scabbed and healing.
The silence had thickened enough to make him lift his head stiffly and flick a glance my way. Then he fixed his gaze on his lap, on his pale hands moving against each other between his knees. The hands were unmarked; he hadn't done any damage to his assailant. Or even tried to, I thought. Not a fighter, Todd Bellin, in any sense of the term. Passive type; possibly a coward. Victim with a capital V.
I said, "Tell me what happened, Mr. Bellin."
Nothing for a little while. Then, "Saturday night . . . I went to a movie. He was here when I got back . . . waiting for me."
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