Lethal Fetish

by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood

“That’s what I’ve heard.” I took another swig and swallowed hard.

  “But she never hinted that a deadly spider would get her off. And like I said, even if that’s what she wanted, I only provide professionals with anything dangerous.”

  “So you do import deadly spiders?”

  “Sure, if a customer has the background to deal with ’em. Zookeepers know the deal with a Brazilian wandering spider or katipo spider from New Zealand.”

  “Or a Sydney funnel-web?”

  “Now, there’s a piece of work. In fact, a couple weeks ago I sent one of those nasty numbers along with an Australian redback to the California Academy of Sciences for their special exhibit on deadly animals. Landed me five hundred bucks for those bad boys.”

  “Any other deliveries?”

  “Not from me. I think they borrowed some poisonous snakes from the San Diego Zoo and a stonefish and lionfish from the Monterey Aquarium.”

  “Okay, so you provided a funnel-web to the Cal Academy. Is there any way it could’ve been sent to the Pleasure Palace?”

  “Holy shit, that’s what killed the lady? Look, I sent her a black house spider that I got from a contact in Christchurch. She was a good size and could give someone a painful nip but that’s all. Made a fast C-note on that order.” He threw back the last of his Old Crow.

  “No chance of a mix up?”

  “None, nada, zippo. I don’t make mistakes like that. I transport dangerous and high-end products myself. I used a local delivery service for a couple years and lost nearly a grand worth of Amazonian butterflies when the fucking moron stopped for a couple of beers and left the engine running to keep the truck warm. When he was done with the suds, the leaky exhaust system had gassed my inventory.” I finished my drink in a single gulp to minimize contact with the cheap bourbon.

  “Scudder, I appreciate the conversation—and the drink. Anything I can do for you?” The old adage about honey catching more flies than vinegar describes a wide expanse of human relations.

  He rose from his chair and leaned forward with his fists on the desktop. “Yeah Riley, you make damn sure that the cops and reporters don’t drag me and my business into the mess you’re uncovering.” His posture reminded me of angry funnel-web spider. So much for the efficacy of honey.

  I nodded assent and offered my hand, which he took with a crushing grip so as to leave no doubt as to how he’d deal with me should the police come knocking. I figured I could probably take him with skill and speed, but I didn’t relish the possibility of finding out.

  To keep following the sewage pipe that had led me to Scudder meant a trip out to Golden Gate Park for a visit to the Cal Academy’s exhibit. If something got screwed up with spider identification and delivery, one of the curators should know or suspect something. The only other explanation was that a scary, sexy spider and a truly lethal species were switched after Scudder delivered the creatures. That seemed far-fetched, but I couldn’t have imagined the depth of this whole moral cesspool a few days ago. What a tangled web we weave.

  ~||~

  Tomorrow was my Saturday with Tommy, and we’d planned to go to “our secret site” in Redwood Regional Park east of Oakland. Our father had found a rock outcropping where tens of thousands of lady beetles aggregated for the winter, and we had made an annual trek to the site for at least twenty years. I’d set aside this weekend for our traditional outing, but now I needed to let my brother know the plan had changed. He wasn’t good with disappointment, but spending the day in the Cal Academy’s museum might be an easy sell given the weather was about as miserable as January gets in the Bay area.

  I drove over to Saint Teresa’s and found Nina in the daycare center, helping the variously challenged adults to assemble a gigantic scrapbook using gobs of rubber cement. Tommy and Karsa seemed to be enjoying peeling the adhesive from their fingers more than applying it to the poster-sized pages of the book that was going to be a birthday gift for Father Griesmaier. Nina was her perpetually patient self, gently directing her charges to remember the purpose of their task. I slipped into the doorway and caught her attention.

  “What a lovely surprise,” she said, looking over her shoulder before pulling me into the hallway for a very irreverent kiss.

  “I’ve come to save you from a lunch of sloppy joes and Jell-O Pudding Pops,” I said, “and to let Tommy know that tomorrow’s plan has changed.”

  Nina scowled. “He’s really excited about the ladybug expedition. I told him I’d tag along and bring hot chocolate. Why the change in plans?”

  “I need to follow up on a lead with the Linford case while the trail is still warm. Don’t worry, we’re going to the Cal Academy which will be even better than the soggy woods. But right now, you and I are going to lunch.”

  “We have a dinner date tonight, right?”

  “Sure, but something other than ground beef in tomato sauce on white bread will make for a lovely break from the glue vapors, eh?”

  “Let me make sure that Gwen can handle lunch. She’s a dream, but I don’t like to ask too much of our volunteers. While I do that, you can break the news to Tommy.”

  I told my brother about Saturday’s plan and he was okay with the deal as long as the weather was going to be cold and rainy, and Nina could still come along, and I promised that we’d see the lady beetles (not ladybugs, of course, as he insisted on using the correct, common name) next weekend. Gwen agreed to supervise sloppy joes, and I let Nina pick our lunch spot. She opted for a new place called Yum Yum Fish, which I hoped had invested more in their food than their marketing.

  We headed across town to this newish hole-in-the-wall that Nina’s friends had insisted was the best sushi restaurant around. As far as I’m concerned, slicing up raw fish isn’t cooking and a place that doesn’t cook isn’t a restaurant. But sushi is all the rage—along with a toy called a Rubik’s cube and a nighttime soap opera called “Dallas”—which says a great deal about how much a fellow should trust the judgment of society these days.

  After my morning of sweets, I wasn’t very hungry. Besides, nobody stuffs themselves eating raw fish and vegetables rolled with rice that’s wrapped in seaweed. Perched on a stool at the counter and listening to Nina rave about a lecture she attended by N. Scott Momaday, the American Indian writer and Pulitzer Prize winner who’s become her hero, made for a pleasant lunch—and, to be honest, the tuna roll was delicious. Maybe I was duped by the chef’s ecstatic recommendation for the chu-toro cut which ran me nearly ten bucks, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

  I had Nina back to the church by one o’clock. Sitting in the truck, she gave me a lingering kiss followed by a deep, humming sigh that meant she was looking forward to our romantic dinner—as well as dessert.

  CHAPTER 21

  I finished the week where it started, back at the shop with normal people. It had been a wild ride since Larry had pulled me from Gustaw’s Bakery on Monday and Carol had told me the police had some questions about a bizarre pair of corpses and their deeply disturbed grandson. I was ready for the weekend, following an afternoon with Carol devoted to deciding how long we could keep the utility vans before replacing them (almost eighty thousand miles of city driving was pushing our luck), where we should buy advertisements (billboards, bus stops and yellow pages being possibilities), who we might hire to audit our books (being a CPA would have been one of the circles of hell had Dante known about this profession), and how delinquent customers could be cajoled into paying without our resorting to a collection agency (I hate sending in the goons, but I can’t afford to run a charity). Carol was an angel throughout these deliberations, but I could see her running out of steam. So, we called it quits at four, just as I heard the garage door open in the warehouse and the guys pull in to unload the vans.

  By the time I shut down the front office and headed to the back, Larry and Dennis had settled into their makeshift living room. I could smell the Cubans wafting down the hallway, and the earthy smoke was far more appealing than the electric t
wang coming from the stereo.

  “Hey chief, got any weekend plans?” Larry asked, resting his feet on the decrepit coffee table.

  “Chasing down some leads and listening to some decent music,” I said.

  “Don’t be dissing Merle Haggard.” I could’ve admitted that the chorus, in which Merle begged for someone to stop the madly spinning world so he could get off, hit home after this week, but I didn’t want to encourage Larry’s musical taste.

  “Yo Riley, if you got the time, we got the beer,” Dennis said, pulling out a Miller from the softly wheezing fridge.

  “Just one and then I need to hit the gym before dinner with Nina.”

  “Go easy on the grindage, boss. Last Saturday of the month is tomorrow,” Larry said.

  “Yeah, gotta save room for the dyno Goat Hill family dinner. I be askin’ yo’ mamma to adopt me if I could get that Irish soul food on a regular basis.”

  My mother made a feast for the extended family that comprised my business. She knew their hard work allowed me to support her and Tommy—and an Old World mother needed a houseful of family on occasion.

  I settled into a faux leather recliner that was disgorging wads of foam rubber from the seams and tilting to the side like a capsizing boat. We talked about whether lite beer was actually beer (no), whether Jim Plunkett was better than Ken Stabler (no resolution, except that neither trumped Joe Montana), whether Reagan’s military buildup made sense (“hell no” according to Larry), and whether Smokey Robinson was past his prime (Dennis defended the singer, while I tried to remember anything he’d sung). I finished my beer while listening to Mr. Haggard plead to be released from the depravity of the big city. Having spent the week mucking around in the bowels of humanity, I empathized with the plaintive lyrics but doubted that people were any less twisted in small towns.

  At Marty’s, I started with jumping rope, followed by a bout of shadow boxing, a workout on the heavy bag, a few minutes on the speed bag to catch my breath, and then some pushups, jump squats and a couple hundred sit ups. The last twenty-five hurt. A lot. Those were penance for the fattening sins of bakery indulgences. Drenched and panting, I draped a towel over my shoulders and walked over to where Marty was leaning on the apron of the sparring ring.

  “The Mexican kid’s outmatched,” I said, watching the fighters.

  “He’s got heart,” Marty said, chewing on the stump of his cold cigar.

  “And the black kid has speed and power,” I said as the Mexican absorbed a combination. The head gear would protect his brains, but his body was taking a pounding.

  “Yeah, Clyde needs to step in since the corners won’t.” Marty lifted a hand to catch the referee’s eye, then shook his head to signal an end to the fight. Clyde was the half-time maintenance man, sometimes trainer, and occasional sparring ref. He wasn’t particularly good at any of these, but Marty had a soft spot for the former boxer who’d taken a brutal beating in the fight that ended his shot at an actual payday in the ring. Clyde stepped between the boxers and waved off the black fighter. The gutsy, outclassed Mexican briefly spread his arms in futile protest to salvage his dignity.

  “So Marty, who’s responsible?”

  “For what?”

  “For calling off the black kid. For a boxer ending up like Clyde?”

  “You get into the ring and it’s your deal,” he said, spitting a few strands of tobacco between his feet. “Nobody makes you become a fighter.”

  “But most fighters won’t stop a bout on their own. I’ve been there. Your pride won’t let you.”

  “Sure, the ref can stop the action and your corner can throw in the towel,” Marty shifted the cigar to the other corner of his mouth, “but when a man decides to be a fighter, he knows the deal. Sometimes he loses bad, sometimes he wins big. Better than being a cop, Riley. I never seen a cop take a beating for a million bucks.”

  “You mean the ‘Drama in Bahama’ last month?”

  “More like the ‘Trauma in Bahama’ you ask me. Berbick pounded Ali in the last three rounds. It would’ve been a serious whoopin’ if Ali had faced a world-class fighter.”

  “So the beating is on Ali?”

  “Damn right. Getting into the ring at thirty-nine, what did he expect?” Marty shuffled off in the direction of his office where the phone had started ringing.

  I headed to the locker room, knowing I was older than Ali and wondering if private investigation was a young man’s game. This case with flea collars, insect foreplay, and spider seduction had me feeling like an old man, out of touch and yearning for the days when vice was simple and perverts stuck to trench coats and peep holes.

  On my way up the hill to my house, I mulled over how Ali couldn’t get a boxing license from any state commission based on reports he had brain damage, which is why his final fight was offshore. And I couldn’t get an investigator’s license based on having pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter after beating the location of a sick child out of kidnapper, which is why my pursuit of two-legged vermin was off the books. After the Champ lost to Larry Holmes in 1980, Ali said, “I shall return”—and he did, with Trevor Burbick who embarrassed him. In the ring, experience only goes so far against youth, strength, and speed. Whoever was behind blackmail and murder was probably younger and faster than I was. But, outside the ring, sometimes age and seasoning prevail. Sometimes.

  ~||~

  I showered and checked for residual rash from Lane’s botanical treachery. Pleased that the hot water had not revived the hives, I changed into clothes appropriate for a nice dinner, donned a woolen overcoat, and picked up Nina. We’d decided on the Tadich Grill a couple blocks from the Maritime Plaza. It was a Friday night and they’ve never taken reservations, so we knew what we were getting into—a long wait at the oldest restaurant in the state, for some of the best seafood in the city. We got lucky and nabbed a couple stools at the bar. I treated myself to a Connemara, Ireland’s smooth, single peated malt whiskey, which someone described as smelling like a toffee shop had burned down. Nina had a virgin hot toddy, to stave off the chill. We didn’t mind the wait, as the dark wood paneling softly lit with Art Deco brass and milk-glass fixtures provided a romantic ambiance. Like always, the place was noisy, but the voices mingle and meld in the high ceiling to create a background din assuring that each conversation is just between lovers.

  Nina told me about her worry that Petey—the street kid who Tommy and Karsa had befriended—had not appeared all week. She didn’t think he had the savvy to make it in the dark corners of the city without someone providing protection. Nina had contacted some of the vagrants in her Indian community, a sort of extended family of social rejects. She trusted these people to keep tabs on a naïve white kid who was important to her, at least when they weren’t drunk. But these half-sober half breeds hadn’t seen anyone with a heart-shaped birthmark—except one possible sighting by Chief. I’d met him a few times while doing jobs in the back alleys downtown. A Chowok in his sixties, Chief was some distant relation to Nina’s mother, which was probably the case for everyone in the tribe. He was tapped into the homeless network and had heard about a young man, new to the streets, who was hanging out with a refined white man dressed elegantly in black. When our table was ready, Nina shifted the conversation to a less grim topic involving her people.

  “Riley, you absolutely have to read N. Scott Momaday,” she enthused while scanning the menu. I was too busy contemplating dinner to focus on literature. “You’ll understand both Chief and me if you read House Made of Dawn.”

  She had my attention. “I’ll get my lover and her down-and-out third cousin twice removed? I’d say that your life is about as far from his as imaginable.” The waiter appeared tableside and asked if we were ready to order. I could tell that Nina’s mind wasn’t on the dinner options, so I proposed that we split a bowl of cioppino and a Dungeness crab Louie salad. She quickly agreed. I added a glass of Chianti to my order and Nina asked for mineral water. Alcoholism had destroyed so many of her people, s
uch as Chief, that she couldn’t bear the thought of booze, but she never judged the drinking culture of the Irish.

  “We come from the same people, but I found a path into respectability,” she said.

  “Being a bigwig in federal law enforcement and then deciding to care for handicapped adults is pretty honorable,” I said with genuine admiration.

  “Society sees me. I’m viewed as doing good work. But Momaday writes about coyotes and their gift of seldom being seen. Chief is like most Indians in the city, keeping to the edges and owning the night.”

  “I’m pretty sure the hookers and dealers own the night,” I said.

  “In a way, yes. But the street people recognize Chief for his wisdom, his rejection of wealth and power. By calling him ‘Chief’ they are saying that he, not the police chief or a chief justice, is the authority in their world.”

  “I see what you mean,” I said, taking a sip of the wine that had materialized at my place, the waiter being something of a coyote himself. “I know there is a whole segment of society living in the shadows of the city. Sometimes they look after the vulnerable, but they’ll just as readily slit a throat.”

  “They are—we are—often driven far into the darkness. But what about the Linfords and people of that class? It seems that they can be every bit as brutal.”

  “And twisted, I’m afraid.” She raised an inquisitive eyebrow as our dinner arrived.

  After a few bites, she pushed gently: “Did you want to tell me more about the case?”

  “I don’t want to ruin an exquisite meal with distasteful details. Let me just say that having money only buys you a better mask. The veneer of normalcy is as thin and fragile in the mansions of Nob Hill as it is in the gutters of the Tenderloin.”

  “I have to wonder,” she said dipping a hunk of bread into the cioppino broth, “whether the veneer of wealth and power will crumble one day. Momaday wrote that the native people have assumed the appearance of their enemies but there is a quiet resistance, what he calls ‘a long outwaiting.’”