Devil's Arcade

by Robert Bucchianeri

  She was partially right. Poe is a sociopath, albeit a very ambiguous and complex one, but it seemed he loved or at least had feelings for his brother. But as far as forgiveness goes, I had my doubts. In the long run, if he felt betrayed, whether intentionally or not, blood ties wouldn’t matter a whit to him.

  “I gather he didn’t take your advice.”

  She shook her head, nibbling on her thumbnail with her front teeth. “He said he’d think about it. I tried to get him to stay with me for the night, but he said he would try to see if he could fix things. He said he had an appointment with one of the guys, one who wasn’t so bad, and he had an idea, something that might just make things better and, if it worked out, then he’d talk to his brother. I was afraid for him because he was so agitated. But I couldn’t stop him, and he left, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

  “And that was…?”

  “A week ago Thursday, so about six days now.”

  That was too long. Much too long.

  “Did he say anything more about the appointment or this man he was meeting?”

  “No. I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

  “So your dad had a meeting with some guy, a man who’d gotten him involved with cheating the casino, and he hasn’t been seen since.” I let that and its implications sit there in the air between us.

  “He’s not dead if that’s what you think. I’d know it if he was.”

  I’ve had many people tell me the same thing about loved ones. Some of them have been right. Others, not so much.

  “Did you tell Poe all this?”

  She looked away again and placed both hands on top of her head, maybe trying to keep something in her brain from bubbling over and out. Finally, she said, “No, I didn’t. I was…afraid to.”

  Good thinking.

  “I didn’t know enough about what was going on. I wanted to tell him. I may still if you turn me down. Maybe it will help him find Dad. No matter what it is, I’m sure that the two of them can work it out together.”

  I’d heard nothing that would make me cancel my trip to Hawaii. I felt sympathy for her and Bobby, he’d gotten in way over his head, but there wasn’t any reason for me to get involved.

  I suddenly noticed the piece of paper in my hand with the second and third best detectives in San Francisco written on it. I held it up to her and said, “These men can help you, Paula. I’m sure they’d do as well as I.”

  Little white lies are often just the right elixir to ease the jammed joints that can gum up human relations.

  Again, she gave me those soft, yearning puppy dog eyes, followed by a voice not much more than a murmur. “Mr. Plank, I’m begging you. Can you just spend a little time before you leave even? I have a hunch where you might start. I told my uncle, and he told me his men checked it out but got nowhere. I’ve been there myself twice this week. But I don’t know what I’m doing. Being a woman in this place doesn’t help. Can you at least take an hour out of your day, today? I know it’s asking a lot. But just go to this one place where someone might know more about Dad and what happened. I’m sure. You’re the best, right? If anyone can get the truth out of this place, it’s you. Please.”

  It was less than twenty-four hours until I was scheduled to pick up Alexandra for our afternoon flight to Honolulu. No time to start an investigation of any sort. Time only to attend to some last-minute trip details, pack, and get ready to leave. It would be a total waste of time to go to wherever this place was and ask questions when Poe’s men, motivated and thorough, and Paula herself, had already tried.

  Did she think I could pull a rabbit out of a hat in the blink of an eye? Did I look like a magician?

  That’s not how an investigation works. A case usually relies on the slow, methodical gathering of information through interviews with people, likely and unlikely, and the resulting details sometimes yield clues, but clues were subtle things, details that most people didn’t notice or made no sense unless you thought outside the box, knew that there was no box.

  Finding a missing person or solving a murder took time and patience and keen attention to people, places, and things, most of which needed to be sifted through and then discarded, proven worthless. Some of which held the promise of the one detail or clue that lit a fire under other clues and, with a little luck and persistence, allowed the detective to have that ah-hah moment that one lives for.

  There was no magic involved.

  Not usually.

  I won’t say never because that’s the thing with magic—once in a while it’ll rear up and kiss you on the ass.

  I told Paula Fenderdale that she’d bought a couple of hours of my time and promised that I’d call her before I left town.

  Four

  Before I left Acapella Blues, I called Marsh to tell him about my meeting with Paula Fenderdale and my plans to investigate just a little, but he couldn’t talk. He told me to drop by Kabuki, the nightclub and, naturally, Kabuki theater that he was developing with our good friend, Dao.

  When I got there, both of them were up on the stage, with the magnificent, shimmery bronze-toned theater curtain wavering over their heads like a sail.

  They’d been working on it for more than a year, struggling through San Francisco’s labyrinthine inspection and permitting process while trying to satisfy Marsh’s commitment to perfection and Dao’s sense of authentic Kabuki style.

  I joined them on stage, and Dao turned to me immediately and said, “You heard the happy, amazing news?”

  I gave him a blank look.

  He grasped Marsh’s elbow. “Our friend is getting married.”

  Marsh looked away, his eyes searching for a distraction, a way to deflect Dao’s excitement. He spotted a man with a utility belt and a hard hat struggling with some cable wires in a dimly lit corner behind the shimmery curtain and shouted, “Tony, you need help?”

  “No, boss, I got it. Though it would be nice if Josie could get us more twelve-gauge ethereal.”

  “How much?”

  “Double the last order.”

  “You got it.”

  Dao shook Marsh’s elbow lightly. “Such a pleasant surprise. Tommy is such a nice boy. Meiying loves him.”

  Marsh was paying no mind, his glance bouncing around the building, looking for a diversion.

  A proud groom he did not seem to be.

  Just then Meiying, Dao’s wife, appeared to make things even more awkward.

  She lit up the room. Even in her late sixties, she’s still a beauty, a lovely little Asian spark plug. But she carries her Beijing culture and manners with her. She was sent over in her twenties to marry Dao, an arranged marriage that turned out to be love at first sight for Dao.

  She marched right up to her husband and reached for his hand. He took it, his eyes glowing with the pride and the satisfaction always evident when he was with her.

  She turned her gaze to me and said, “See? You have no excuse now, Plank. Shame on you.”

  For a moment, I felt confused but then she added, “Marsh has shown you up. He is a man. You are still a boy.”

  Meiying has been trying to marry me off almost since the day I met her and Dao a few years ago. They have their boat, Sweet and Sour, docked not too far from mine on Fisherman’s Wharf, although their floating home is decidedly more luxurious than my modest digs. Dao was wealthy before his fortieth birthday and still makes beaucoup bucks as a freelance investment advisor to people even richer than he is.

  I love Meiying, but she drives me crazy. She seldom lets up and has tried to set me up with women of just about every nationality and culture. They’re always young, gorgeous, and smart. What more could a man want?

  Since I’m relatively committed to Alexandra, and now our adopted daughter, Frankie, she’s let up on the blind date arranging, but she thinks the fact that I haven’t asked Alexandra to marry me borders on the criminal.

  In her world, a man like me deserves to be locked up, less I infect other eligible bachelors with my am
oral lifestyle.

  I looked at Dao, who gave me a sympathetic shrug of his shoulders.

  Marsh, who was almost impossible to fluster, looked like he wanted to crawl under the stage.

  I understood Meiying. She was from another place and time, but I didn’t understand Marsh’s uncharacteristic, rash action, which, by his demeanor, he knew to be batshit crazy.

  Meiying took Marsh in a hug. He stood there, his arms at his side, her head reaching the top of his ribcage, as she murmured, “We are so happy for you Marsh. Sweet and Sour is yours for the wedding.”

  I guess her views weren’t wholly traditional, as you’d expect she’d have a problem with gay marriage, but she loves the Marsh man so much, and not only because he’d twice saved their lives. She was overjoyed that he would be happy. And she equated adult human happiness with marriage.

  It had worked for her, after all.

  She looked up at him, and he looked into her eyes, although he still looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

  She said, “When?”

  Marsh shrugged.

  “You have it on Sweet and Sour?”

  “I’ll ask Tommy.”

  “Good. You get married soon, no?”

  “Tommy wants to get married just before Christmas.”

  “Wonderful. I help you plan.”

  “Tommy’s taking care of all that.”

  His voice was flat, bordering on strangled.

  Meiying didn’t seem to pick up on the negative vibes. She knew Marsh was unusual. And her confidence that marriage was the cure for any man’s problems let her thoughts sail above any present-day storm.

  She let him go turned to me with a disapproving look. “What you think Alexandra think?”

  I didn’t think. I hadn’t thought. She’d think it was as inexplicable as I did.

  But Meiying might have a point. I knew without her saying it that Alexandra wanted a permanent commitment from me.

  At least until recently, I’d been sure she’d swoon if I got down on one knee with a little box in my hand.

  But, as I’ve said, the mood around the house had altered subtly. That was my fault, and Hawaii would fix it.

  Meiying added, “I tell you what she think—”

  “Meiying,” Dao whispered, “let’s celebrate Marsh and Tommy. Max can wait.”

  Meiying frowned, looked at Dao, pursed her lips disapprovingly. But she nodded. “Okay. We celebrate Marsh today. We knock sense into Plank tomorrow.”

  Dao said, “Let’s go to the Rusty Root and have lunch. Have you told Bo?”

  Marsh replied, “No.”

  Not a big surprise.

  Meiying clapped her hands, signaling that nothing could be more fun than spreading the good news to another friend.

  Bo was one of my best friends, a musician in a semi-successful band he and I had both been in in our twenties. He now owned a great restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf and played in another band on the side.

  The Rusty Root was also where Dao and I convened for our ongoing Cribbage mano-a-mano every Wednesday at noon.

  Although the combat between us was usually not much of a fight. Dao won upward of eighty percent of the games, and over the past year I hadn’t been able to up my winning percentage more than a few measly points.

  I told Dao and Meiying and three members of the Kabuki team, the primary choreographer, the producer, and director, to go on ahead to the Rusty Root, and that Marsh and I would join them.

  After they’d left, the two of us sat on the stage while I filled him in on Paula Fenderdale’s visit.

  “Do you ever turn down a woman in need?” Marsh asked, but I knew it was rhetorical, so I didn’t answer.

  “Any other reason you changed your mind?” he added, then shouted, “Hey, Tony, those two by fours you were waiting for are supposed to be delivered today so we can start on the balance beam architecture.”

  “Great, boss,” Tony shouted back while traversing the back of the stage with a long metal beam wavering over his shoulder.

  I waited until Tony disappeared backstage and said, “I don’t know. She seemed sincere. She just wanted me to check out one place, spend a couple of hours asking questions, see what I could see. She’s really worried about her dad, and it sounds like she has cause.”

  “Yeah. Cause. Is this because of Poe? Like you’re trying to help him without directly helping him?”

  “No. I know Bobby too. He’s a mess, but likable. Being Poe’s brother can’t be easy on a guy like that. I have a little time before we leave, so why not see if I can help his daughter and him?”

  “Why not,” Marsh repeated. “Que Sera.”

  “Will I be pretty?”

  Marsh laughed. “That’s it, isn’t it? You want to please. You want everyone to think you’re pretty.”

  “You know better than that.”

  Above the smell of spanking-fresh wood and swirling sawdust that permeated the theater under construction, the scent of pizza tickled my nose. The guys in the back had probably ordered out, and I realized how hungry I was.

  “So, can you check out Paula Fenderdale? Here’s her phone number. She seemed sincere, and I’m sure there’s no problem, but run her anyway.” I got up, stretched my hands over my head while rolling up onto my tippy toes, flexing up and down. “Let’s go see Bo. I need some linguini and mussels and we can tell him your good news.”

  “Yes, to the mussels. I’m not going to tell him a damn thing.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. By the time we get there, Meiying will have him planning your bachelor party at the Rusty Root.”

  Marsh shook his head dismissively and took off.

  I followed in his footsteps, wondering at the profound strangeness of life itself.

  Five

  After lunch, where Bo Fiddler had provided tasty platters of mussels and linguine and calamari to all of us, and been as gobsmacked as me about Marsh’s coming nuptials, while Marsh sat stoically under the weight of a lot of unwanted attention, I took my Ducati motorcycle down the 101 to San Francisco’s peninsula, in San Bruno, near SFO Airport.

  I sat in my car parked at a meter across the street from the place that Paula Fenderdale had sent me—Matthew’s Manufacturing Muscles gymnasium.

  Three points for alliteration.

  I’d normally have asked a client in her circumstances for a key or other means of access to her dad’s apartment. I didn’t even know what town he lived in.

  If someone disappears, the best place to start your search is the place he last called home. Often, but not always, there are hints—subtle, hidden, or right out in the open, clues how to proceed. Answers to questions you might not have even thought to ask. Perhaps they might not reveal where to start looking, but the mysteries of a troubled inner life or the whys and hows, the motivations behind the disappearance, if you know where to look and how to pay attention, might just be lying there in plain sight.

  But I didn’t want to visit Bobby’s house. I knew that if I picked up the scent of the mystery there, I’d have a hard time letting go.

  The gym was bookmarked between a Ninja Shushi and Tofu bar and a Japanese restaurant, which seemed redundant. Directly across the street was a small family-owned casino, Flapjack Fred’s, which had been around for more than a hundred years. It had started out as a pool hall and betting parlor where it was rumored the patriarch of the family used to say if he lost a big bet, he’d pay off in pancakes.

  Now it was a full-fledged, but relatively tiny, casino.

  My eyes roved between the scruffy gym and the pedestrian off-white brick casino exterior, which looked more like the entrance to a bar, and I felt a sense of dread bubbling up inside me.

  Clues. Damn clues.

  It seemed too much of a coincidence that this was where Bobby’s daughter thought her dad might hang out, or at least be familiar with. A casino totally unlike Poe’s glamorous tricked-out high-end place, but still, a brother-in-arms.

  What wer
e the chances that there was no connection between the two gambling joints? I pictured Poe wincing at that term for describing his pride and joy.

  A man lay sprawled on his side on the ground beside the entrance to Matthew’s Manufacturing Muscles. His shock of grayish-black hair looked as if somebody had plugged his head into a wall socket. A large nasty purple bruise swelled on his right temple. Dried blood stained the cavity of his visible ear. His head and legs peeked out from beneath a large plastic bag from which spilled a Styrofoam egg container, a box of candy Easter eggs, a half-empty bottle of no-name whiskey, an open box of Cheerios, a flyer advertising a $2.99 breakfast at Fred’s Flapjacks, and a crushed can of Mountain Dew. A mangy white cat lay curled into the crook of his arm.

  Despite his location, it didn’t look like he’d worked out in a very long time.

  I dropped to my haunches, dug his arm out from beneath the plastic bag, and found his wrist. He had a pulse, but it was fast and uneven.

  “Sir?” I said, leaning toward his face. The strong smell of urine mixed with unbathed male made me hold my breath. I shook his shoulder. He let out a loud snort, mumbled what sounded like, “Shitmeister,” but kept his eyes closed. He rolled to the left until his face was pressed against the cat’s ass. It didn’t seem to bother the feline.

  I rose and entered the gym through the smoky glass door plastered with faded photos of overly muscled men flexing. There was the requisite photo of our former governor, Arnold, among them. I was sure he’d never set foot inside, but he’d presumably started out at a place in Austria very much like this.

  Inside, I was confronted with a facility that held no truck with fitness trends. It was small and compact, fifteen hundred square feet devoted to one particular thing.

  And that thing, unsurprisingly, was building muscle. You weren’t going to find a lot of women hanging out here.