“Oh man, oh man,” Dennis said. “They was doin’ all that with what I gave ’em. It was like givin’ drugs to kids in the projects. They trusted me and ended up dying.”
“Dennis, stop,” I said. “It is not your fault. I should’ve gone over there and checked out the situation.”
“The Linfords called one last time on December 9th,” Carol said, closing the file on her lap.
“And?” I asked.
“I left you a note to return their call because Dennis was out with the flu.”
“And I never got back to them because they’d become one of those never satisfied, problem customers. Goddammit.” We all sat in silence for a minute.
“What’s next, boss?” asked Dennis.
“I’ve got two leads worth following. First, I need to talk to a shrink about what the hell was going on in the Linfords’ heads.”
“Other than chlordane dust, eh?” said Larry.
“Right, although it probably wasn’t helping. And then, I want to meticulously examine what’s in the bag that Linford labeled as ‘Proof.’”
“In other words fellas, Riley is going to be trying to get in front of where this whole mess is headed and save our business,” said Carol, getting to her feet. “Which means we’re down a man, which means you two will need to cover.”
“At least it’ll feel like I’m helpin’,” said Dennis unfolding his lanky body from the couch.
“I’m down with that,” said Larry, rubbing his biceps. “So the dynamic duo had better bounce if we’re going to get in front of Carol’s job schedule.”
The guys headed out the back to the vans, Carol headed up to the office, and I called Nina for a psychiatric referral.
CHAPTER 6
“Hey sweetie, what’s up?” Nina seemed cheery given our celibate weekend and my calling her at work. The church secretary had grumbled when I asked to speak to Nina, who was supervising the daycare for retarded adults. I sympathized since Nina’s coming to the phone meant the secretary had to handle Tommy and the others, who were probably in the middle of a messy craft project.
“It’s a long story, but I need the name of the psychiatrist you’ve been seeing.”
“She’s a psychologist.” The distinction was lost on me. Whatever the title, the person was supposed to fix your head. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“With me, yes. With the world, no. I need professional advice on a pretty twisted situation that has not-so-pretty implications for my business.”
“Is Larry okay?”
“Larry? Yeah, he’s fine.” Nina knew about Larry’s nightmares of his time in Nam. She worried about him. Actually, she worried about Carol and Dennis, too. And me. Her own messed up background connected her to the gang at Goat Hill Extermination. With that much to worry about, no wonder she was seeing a psychologist.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I have—or had—a couple of customers who went bonkers and might’ve poisoned themselves with chemicals we provided.”
“Riley! That’s a big deal. People committing suicide with your pesticides will be disastrous for your reputation. Who will want to be associated with the purveyors of death?”
“Thanks babe, I hadn’t quite put the situation in such stark terms. But we don’t know whether their deaths were suicide or accident or something else.”
“By which you mean murder? Somebody used your products to kill people? Oh God Riley, that would be even worse.”
“It’s unlikely, but I can’t close any doors at this point. The police are suspicious but withholding judgment for now. I need to stay in front of this one, which means I need some professional help.”
“I can imagine the stress and anxiety this must be causing you.” Her tone shifted from alarm to sympathy.
“Not help for me. I need to get into the heads of the victims—and maybe their grandson, who’s my only suspect if it wasn’t an accident. The old folks had delusions about insects that might’ve caused them to misuse the chemicals. Or there might be some sort of sexual deviancy involved. Like I said, it’s a long story.”
“I’m not sure I follow you, but I am sure Dr. Chen can help. The woman is brilliant.”
Nina gave me the shrink’s number and reminded me of our dinner date at her family’s restaurant tomorrow night before hanging up.
Nina had been seeing Dr. Chen for nearly a year. I doubted that an hour’s therapy was worth ten hours of Nina’s wages at the daycare center, but the counseling seemed important to her—and she was important to me. For that kind of cash, I’d almost be willing to sit in a plush office and feign sympathy. Almost. After a week of “uh, huh” and “say more” I’d need a shrink to keep me from killing myself.
I had been required to see the police psychologist after I killed a perp—a wannabe revolutionary who knew the whereabouts of a sick, kidnapped child. I explained that I didn’t have any feelings other than mild regret that the punk decided loyalty trumped survival. Even that was admirable in its own way, as I told the shrink who eagerly jotted down this revelation in my file. He seemed incredulous that I wasn’t traumatized. I couldn’t convince him I had a sworn duty to protect vulnerable people from criminals—and if that meant beating a punk to obtain crucial information about an innocent kid and if that beating ended up being unintentionally lethal, then I would calmly accept whatever came next. What came next was losing my badge, but not my sanity.
I called Josephine Chen’s office and asked to speak to the doctor. The receptionist said the doctor was unavailable. I asked when she’d be available. The receptionist explained the doctor was available only by appointment. I asked for an appointment this afternoon. She said the earliest time would be next Tuesday afternoon. I said the matter was urgent. She asked if next Tuesday at three o’clock would work or whether I’d prefer to be transferred to the mental health unit at San Francisco General. I hung up.
So, in the spirit of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,’ I went up front, gave Carol some brief instructions, and had her call Dr. Chen’s office. Using her most authoritative voice, she introduced herself as Dr. Carroll and explained she was setting up a new counseling practice and she wanted to get to know those in the field, particularly such a highly respected colleague as Dr. Chen. Would her colleague be available to discuss professional matters over lunch, say at the Hang Ah Tea Room? Carol hung up and smiled. I would need to do some fast talking tomorrow at noon.
~||~
I went back to my office and pulled out the baggie labeled with “Proof!” With a hand lens, I could make out a few louse-like insects mixed in with hair and scabs. I needed better magnification to identify the little scoundrels. I decided to put off my taxonomic challenge until evening when I could use the microscope back at my house. So, as long as we were still in business, I spent the afternoon doing work to pay the bills.
San Francisco’s ants, along with a fair number of residents, had been driven indoors by the winter weather. My first call was to a distraught woman in Richmond. An address on the other side of the city gave me the chance to hear the opening strains of Havergal Brian’s symphony No. 1, The Gothic. The address was on Clement, which wasn’t the ritziest neighborhood, but there were plenty of swank places. I’m not sure how the affluent Russians and Chinese ended up in the Inner Richmond, but I was intrigued how America’s two communist enemies had mastered capitalism in San Francisco. Carol’s note on the work order said, “Mrs. Wang asks you to park at the Dupont tennis courts, not at her house.”
Like many well-to-do, Mrs. Wang didn’t want the neighbors seeing an exterminator’s truck parked in front of her home, which was an ostentatious collision of Edwardian and Spanish Colonial architectures. Like many in the area, this house was built with exterminators’ job security in mind. The full basement—an unusual feature elsewhere in the city—put moist soil adjacent to poorly sealed walls and virtually assured the arrival of six-legged tenants.
I introduced myself and Mrs. Wang
declared, “Mr. Riley must do something. Ants all over basement. They eating coconut. I crush them. They stink like rotten coconut. Where they get coconut? You kill them fast.” I managed to get her calmed down, suggested she make some tea for us—my standard ploy to keep the homeowner from being underfoot—and headed to the basement. I already knew the culprit, as there’s only one kind of ant that invades homes and reeks with the odor of decaying coconut, although not from eating the stuff. The solution was as simple as the identification—the infamous, odorous house ant.
The upstairs was decorated with silk hangings, jade sculptures, and elaborate cork carvings of temple scenes set behind glass in lacquered frames. Conversely, the basement provided a ‘stink ant’ haven. For starters, there were a couple of kids’ bedrooms. Along one wall of the boy’s bedroom (my Sherlockian deduction being based on posters of Wonder Woman in her armored bodice and Farrah Fawcett-Majors in her red one-piece swimsuit, along with the smell of gym clothes and Old Spice) was a pyramid of soda cans in an apparent effort to display one of every brand known to man. The sugary remnants of the collection provided a feast for the ants, and the wall backed to the utility room with a washer, dryer, and hot water heater providing tropical conditions for the sweet-toothed ants.
An hour’s work bagging up the cans (the kid would need another hobby), putting down some bait stations, and caulking cracks was followed with a bout of landscaping outside the house. After I trimmed back the boxwood hedge to make it harder for the ants to access the foundation, I was cold and wet. Mrs. Wang’s tea hit the spot. She told me it was lapsang souchong, the smoky tea equivalent of a peaty Scotch—that comparison being my own. I explained she’d done well to call me before the problem was severe, as many people in nice neighborhoods are ashamed of having pests and wait until infestations reach staggering levels. It’s funny how people consider having ants to be a character flaw but a case of athlete’s foot is not a moral failing.
I told Mrs. Wang how the ants had gotten in and what they were eating. She muttered something motherly in Chinese that probably meant, “I told that son of mine not to pile trash in his room. Wait until his father gets home.” Mrs. Wang was both embarrassed by having hosted vermin and grateful for my assistance and discretion.
I walked back to my truck and caught the end of The Gothic which is, I think, even longer than Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, neither of which is particularly good but both allow a lazy radio program host to take a nap. And I must say that Brian’s symphony has a huge almost-ending, but he didn’t know when to quit and dragged out the music into a sixth movement that concludes with a whimper from the choir rather than a bang from the orchestra. My work agenda involved heading across Golden Gate Park to a carpenter ant infestation in Sunset—the land of twenty-five-foot-wide lots and stucco facades. The customer’s back porch was listing like a sinking ship. The good news was that carpenter ants are easier to control than termites. The bad news was that having carpenter ants doesn’t prevent termites, as he’d heard from neighbors.
~||~
At the end of the day, I dropped off the truck, locked up the shop and headed over to Marty’s Gym for a title fight with the heavy bag. The bag won in the eleventh round, but I got what I wanted out of the bout—serious sweat and pleasant pain. I chatted with Marty for a few minutes at the apron of the sparring ring while a white kid with heart was getting schooled by a black fighter with talent. Marty chewed his stogie and expressed his admiration for Carol, who had absorbed my tutorials and came every weekend to pummel the bags (heavy and speed), jump rope (including criss-crosses and double unders), and shadow box. He even put on the target mitts and called out combinations for her. In his estimation, she showed the young turks what hard work looked like, along with a desirable and unobtainable body. She brought physical dedication and sexual frustration to his gym. The old codger loved it.
I took a steam which felt great but brought out a rash on my hands and wrists, which I attributed to brushing against poison ivy while collecting insects with Tommy last weekend. On the walk home, the cold drizzle soothed the itchiness while the residual warmth from the sauna lasted to my front door. Anxious to take a closer look at the contents of Linford’s baggie, I rewarmed some leftover coddle which I’d made over the weekend to use up other leftovers. The combination of bangers, rashers, potatoes, onions and whatever else needs to be eaten (in my case, a few aging carrots, a sagging stalk of celery, and a bundle of wilted chives) can vary, but the secret is to never omit a pint of Guinness—half for the pot and half for the cook.
I wolfed down my dinner and went to the living room, furnished with a reclining chair, a declining television, a stereo system with new Realistic ‘Mach One’ speakers (my Christmas present from Nina which was far too expensive, but at least I had the good sense to get her a pearl necklace), a wall of twenty-five-drawer insect cabinets, and a massive, well-worn oak table where I worked on my collection. I poured myself a generous two fingers of Black Bush and put Rigoletto on the stereo with Placido Domingo as the Duke of Mantua and Ileana Cotrubaș as Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda.
I hadn’t managed to draw Nina into symphonic music, but she had become enchanted with opera. Although attending the San Francisco Opera wasn’t a cheap date, she was transfixed by the spectacle and the grand tales of skullduggery, loyalty, vengeance and, of course, romance. So an Indian and an Irishman found common ground in Italian theater. Sometimes, you gotta love this country.
Savoring the smooth sweetness of the whiskey, I got down to work, shaking the contents of the “Proof!” baggie onto a watch glass. Tangled in the detritus of skin and scalp, I found lice. I’ve seen my share of head, body and pubic lice over the years, from people variously humiliated and desperate to be free of the little bastards. But these lice were different. Under the scope I could see that instead of having comically small heads, their noggins were as wide as their bodies. It was as obvious as the difference between the head of a lion and that of a cheetah. I went through my various insect guides, and the best I could figure was that these were chewing, rather than sucking, lice. However, most of the chewing lice lived on birds, not mammals, such as the Linfords. Beyond this crude identification, I was stuck. But sometimes knowing where to get an answer is almost as good as knowing the answer—and tomorrow would provide the opportunity to find the person who’d know what vermin had excited the old man in the days before his death.
I spent a soothing hour pinning a few grasshoppers that Tommy and I had collected in the early fall. We’d driven down to the Zayante sandhills and spent a whole day in search of a particular band-winged grasshopper that was reportedly rare. If spending eight hours to net six insects constitutes being “rare,” then we can confirm this status. But it was a great trip, leaving us sunburnt and exhausted. I’d stored the specimens in my freezer, and they thawed by the time Rigoletto was swearing vengeance against the Duke at the end of Act 2. The grasshoppers weren’t impressive, with grey bodies and pale yellow hindwings, but spreading the left wings (never the right) of the small insects made for an enjoyable challenge.
The story of Rigoletto had me wondering about the Linfords—and the contrasts between appearance and character. Rigoletto’s deformity was provided by nature, but his twisted personality came from his fellow man. In the end, the hunchback couldn’t shield his daughter from the deadly corruption of the world. Nor could the Linfords, in the end, protect themselves with the marvels of modern chemistry—or from themselves. I headed up to bed after Gilda died in Rigoletto’s arms.
CHAPTER 7
Traffic on the Bay Bridge was moving slower than a chilled dollop of Baileys Irish Cream. Listening to the morning program on KDFC reminded me of last summer and how what seems to be a keen idea at the time doesn’t always work out. Carol had spent an entire day with our seasonal help—a college kid whose work ethic grossly exceeded his common sense, to the extent that he had misread a job order and sprayed the front yards of an entire block in Parkside for aphids before a Gre
enpeacenik neighbor called the cops, who contacted Carol, who sorted out the mess. Under her subsequent, close supervision, he organized the chemicals in the warehouse into alphabetical order, which seemed like a fine plan. The pesticides were easier to find for purposes of inventorying the stock, but Larry and Dennis had situated the containers so that the most frequently used products were nearest to the loading dock. So the new arrangement made their daily loading much more strenuous and the organizational plan was abandoned.
I was also reminded of Nina’s plan in the fall to spend a Saturday visiting the “ten best” stained glass windows in the city. She’d found a listing in the Chronicle, and decided it would be a good idea for us to saturate ourselves in chromatic beauty. It was great for the first two, alright for the next trio, increasingly tedious at the following four, and we gave up on the last one after circumnavigating the city and concluding that humans can take only so much kaleidoscopic artistry.
Likewise, the radio host figured that it would be great to organize a program around the theme of felines. He started off strong with some tracks from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats which had become a phenomenon in London last spring. The show was coming to Broadway later this year, but the host had managed to get his hands on a recording. I caught only the latter half or so, and I must say that “Mr. Mistofflelees” and “Macavity: The Mystery Cat” were quite entertaining. That said, things went downhill as the program dug into the litter box of classical music and played Scarlatti’s Cat Fugue performed on the harpsichord (other than bagpipes, banjoes and accordions, no instrument is less musical). This was followed by Duetto buffo di due gatti which I’d once heard performed with two sopranos meowing the piece; it was no less annoying with a soprano and a tenor. It’s cute for about thirty seconds and then it becomes clear why the composer used a pseudonym—after the guy heard the song performed, he understandably decided on anonymity.
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