The Big Boom

by Domenic Stansberry

  SEVENTEEN

  The next day, Dante stopped into Prospero’s Realty. He walked up the long stairs to the second-story office overlooking Stockton Avenue. At the top of the stairs, there was a dirty window that looked out into Chinatown—except it hadn’t been Chinatown back then, when Prospero had thrown out his shingle.

  Joe Prospero had founded the agency some forty-odd years ago, when the Italians had started leaving The Beach. It took up the whole floor now, and Joe had an office in the far back: behind the bullpen, behind the deal table and the water cooler—a traditional office with a glass wall and Venetian shades. A lot of the old-timers didn’t much care for Prospero. They liked his handshake and his big smile well enough, but not how he ran his business. Or so they claimed. He hired Chinese agents. He had a branch agency called the Five Happiness that advertised North Beach properties abroad, to the Hong Kong market. He never let up with his leaflets and his smiles. No matter their complaints, Prospero was the one they came to when it was time to sell.

  At the moment, though, Prospero was out. On the golf course, like he often was; and in his absence, his daughter Beatrice worked the desk. She was a blousy woman with a mole on her neck and hair the color of a pomegranate.

  “Oh, if it isn’t the Pelican,” she said.

  It was what the old ones called him, except Beatrice Prospero was not one of the old ones. She was no older than Dante, but she had adopted their manners. Beatrice resembled her father. In fact, she looked more like her father than her father looked like himself. She was thicker through the shoulders and had darker eyes. Her voice was different, though. Not high like his, but thick and throaty, sensual. She was almost attractive. Almost. And she had a way of looking at you, from the side, her eyes flitting from one end to the other like birds in a cage darting from one side to the next.

  “I was looking for Marilyn,” said Dante.

  “Marilyn Visconti?”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, so the Pelican’s looking for Marilyn Visconti? The man with the nose. The nose that knows. The nosey nose.”

  Beatrice said it with a wise guy glissando, like she knew everything that was up between him and Marilyn, all the secrets. Maybe she did, Dante thought. Maybe he should ask her and find out a thing or two.

  “Yes,” said Dante. “I am looking for Marilyn.”

  “You are interested in selling your father’s place?”

  “Not today.”

  “The market—it’s so hot, the multiple listings burn my fingers.” It was one of her father’s lines, and she smiled when she said it. “These kind of opportunities don’t come everyday.”

  “Where can I find Marilyn?”

  “I’m an agent, too, you know.” Beatrice eyed him provocatively, reared back her head. “Did you try her cell?”

  “No,” he lied. He had tried the number, but Marilyn wasn’t answering. Screening him out. “This is something I want to talk to her about in person.”

  “Real estate’s always personal. It’s one of the most personal things I know.”

  “You’re right,” he said, and smiled despite himself. The Prosperos wore you down. “It’s very personal.”

  “I mean—those people living in your house. Being a landlord. How long can that go on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, is that you? A landlord? And that place you’re living—with all that equity tied up in that house—does this make sense?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Marilyn’s a new agent. She’s good, don’t get me wrong—and of course, you two, well, you know each other. So there’s a trust. But sometimes, with an agent, a little distance, it’s a good thing. Better not to mix love and business.”

  “It’s not the house. I’m not selling.”

  “Maybe not now.” She shrugged. “But someday. How come you two don’t get married?”

  Her eyes were very bright now.

  “That is a personal question.”

  “They’re all personal sooner or later. But you know this, your line of work.”

  “Sure, I know.”

  “She’s up at Marinetti’s. There’s a broker’s open.” She glanced at her watch. “Ends at three—but it’s the first open. People linger.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know where that is, Mr. Pelican?” Her voice was husky and sly. Beatrice Prospero looked at him directly then. She reminded him—with her floral blouse, her lipstick, her jewelry—of one of his cousins, big girls whom he used to fantasize about at night. She eyed him, reading his face. “Sometimes you move on. Sometimes, you just have to let go.”

  “Sure,” said Dante. “I know.”

  “I don’t think you do.” Her eyes were very earnest. “Marilyn, maybe she knows—but I don’t know about you.”

  Dante said nothing. Probably she was right.

  “You want to sell that place,” she said, and her smile was licentious, “you call me. I’ll help you. I’ll do everything I can.”

  She handed him the card then, though there was no reason. He had walked past Prospero’s office most everyday of his life.

  Marinetti’s flat was on Weber Alley. In many ways, it was not the sharpest of locations. When Dante was growing up, these had been small flats for working-class families: plumbers, teachers, cops. Dante had been in them often enough. No views except the laundry lines across the airspace and a concrete patio three floors down, at the bottom of the fire well. There had always been plenty of noise, though: hollering kids and slamming pots and the guy across the way having some kind of tantrum against the wall. The narrow street was different now, at least on the face of it. The old lead-paint facades, gray and green and mustard brown, had been sandblasted and painted up in pastels. Also there was a phalanx of cars out in front of Marinetti’s, double-parked. Mercedes and Jags and the big sports vehicles. The cars of Realtors all lined up, in the mute tones of silver and gold. An agent just now emerged from one such car, her heels clicking on the cobbled walk. She pulled on her skirt and gave Dante a small smile as she headed up.

  The hours for the broker’s open were all but over, but Dante could see people in the windows above. The door was open and at the top of the stairs he caught sight of Marilyn. Her dark hair was pulled back, and she was engaged in conversation with a man in a gray suit. The pair disappeared inside.

  Dante had been up Marinetti’s stairs before. He used to play here with Marinetti’s twin boys. And he had climbed the stairs again, years later, when the daughter Gina Marinetti was married, and then again when the twins were killed in a car accident.

  Upstairs there were maybe twenty, thirty agents, all lingering.

  It was on account of the boom. Buyers outnumbered sellers. There was a shortage of inventory and plenty of money. On the fireplace, hundreds of Realtors had left their business cards.

  Marilyn had dressed the place up, stripping out all of Marinetti’s junk. The stacks of magazines were gone. So were the Italian knickknacks, the old photographs, the crucifix in the bedroom, the family heirlooms. The place had been made spare and relatively modern. There were flowers on the tables and a hundred colored pillows on the bed. It was hard to imagine Marinetti hanging around in here.

  There were more agents in the kitchen, grazing at a courtesy table—laid out with food from Molinari’s. This was where he found Marilyn, leaning against the refrigerator, talking to the man in the gray suit.

  She met Dante’s eyes this time, but did not hold the glance.

  Dante remembered the kitchen. He remembered the twins elbowing one another—noodles up their nose, noodles in their hair—and he remembered Mrs. Marinetti in her red-stained apron.

  Dante leaned beside Marilyn. The man in gray was talking about his client. “A software engineer.” He dropped his voice. “Willing to match any offer.” The man no doubt wanted the sale, but his voice was suggestive of other things as well.

  At length, Marilyn turned to Dante.

  “This is a surprise,” s
he said.

  “I just wanted to talk with you.”

  “You avoid me like the plague. Now you want to talk.” She smiled when she said it, but Dante saw the flash in her eye.

  “That’s what happens you got a house for sale,” said the man in gray. “People suddenly find you interesting.”

  “I’m not in real estate.”

  “That’s what they all say.” The man laughed, but Marilyn didn’t. For this Dante was grateful.

  Another agent approached. Dante remembered her from outside.

  “Are you entertaining offers?”

  “Not till Monday after next. We want to go through a couple of Sunday opens.”

  The woman did not look happy. She glanced around then, as if she knew better than to talk in front of the other agents but could not help herself. “My client wants to make a preemptive offer. He doesn’t want to get into a bidding war.”

  “You can turn the offer in,” Marilyn said. “But I can’t guarantee.”

  “If I give it to you now, you’ll just use it as a floor. You’ll use it to bid the price.”

  “Would you do anything different?” said the man in gray. He touched Marilyn on the shoulder and let his hand linger. “Why don’t we talk about it over dinner?”

  “No,” said Dante. “She’s going out with me.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman agent did not know what to make of this conversation. She looked at Dante as if perhaps he were an agent as well. “All right,” she said, “all right,” but then her composure collapsed. “These bidding wars are obscene. It isn’t right. Back in Spokane, I could buy an entire city block.”

  “You’re not in Spokane,” said the man in gray.

  The woman stormed off, taking her offer with her. The man in the gray suit was amused.

  “You’ll be hearing from her. Don’t worry about that.”

  “I’m not.”

  “And you’ll be hearing from me, too. I’ll give you a call,” he said. He glanced Dante up and down, as if assaying the competition. Then he turned to Marilyn. “Wherever he takes you, I know someplace better.”

  So why have you sought me out,” Marilyn asked. “I wanted to see you.”

  “What for?”

  “Old man Marinetti—it’s going to be hard on him when he leaves that place.”

  “People like to say that,” she said. “But a lot of times it’s not so hard.”

  “I don’t understand—if he’s broke, why can’t he just pull some equity out of the house?”

  “It’s not just the money.”

  “No?”

  “He’s morose. And sometimes—his wife, he sees her ghost, there in the apartment.”

  Dante had heard this before. Italian men and their ghosts. “He won’t see her ghost at St. Vincent’s?”

  “Since when are you the defender of the aged?”

  They were in one of the new restaurants, down off the square. It was a hot-ticket joint—one of those places Stella had complained about the other day down at Serafina’s. The crowd was good—but not like it had been just a few weeks back, when the lines stretched into the street. Maybe Stella was right. These new people, they loved you for a little while, then they moved on.

  But Marilyn liked it here, and the food was good. It had been a month, maybe longer, since she and Dante had been out together.

  “You’re right,” he said now. “It’s none of my business.”

  “Marinetti needs to live somewhere he can get assistance. He knows that… But you didn’t ask me out to talk about George Marinetti. Did you?”

  They’d known each other a while, Dante and Marilyn. Her family was from The Beach as well, and he’d known her almost as long as he’d known Angie. Angie had been the girl around the corner, with her lightness, her mercurial heart, and Marilyn was in some ways the opposite. More voluptuous by nature. More generous—and darker. She was seductive and unruly. Things between them had never been simple. And it had never been just the two of them, not for long. There had always been a third point on the triangle—a lover, an idea. As if they needed a centrifugal force to hold them in abeyance, neither too close together nor too far apart.

  At the moment, it was the man in the gray suit, whoever he was. And if it wasn’t him, it would be somebody else.

  “You’re investigating Angie’s death?”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “But it’s not true. Not anymore.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Antonelli pulled us off the case.”

  “Why?”

  He explained it to her then, or some of it anyway. How Antonelli had hired Cicero Investigations to find his missing daughter. How for a while, after they identified the body, Antonelli had been convinced of foul play. He’d been pretty insistent. Now, suddenly, Antonelli had come around to the police view of things. Angie’s death was an accident. She’d tumbled into the water and drowned.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Drop it,” he said. “Leave it to the police.”

  “Can you do that?”

  Dante lowered his eyes. She knew how he was. Marilyn had known him when he was with Homicide. He’d been unable to drop anything then, and there was no reason to think he was any different now. He did not let things go. He drummed his fingers, mumbling to himself, counting his digits, like they were beads on a rosary. When he was into a case—and he always was—he counted every crack in the sidewalk, every blade of grass. He dwelled in an obsessive netherland—contemplating witness memories, bloodstains, rumors. Always sorting, looking for the thread. Once he had thought—they both had thought—as soon as he solved this… as soon as the next case was done … But it didn’t happen that way. There was always a loose end. An unexplained note. A scrap of cloth. A smear of blood that widened into a trail, and then vanished again, here in the neighborhood. But he couldn’t let it go. In the end, he could not separate himself from what he was investigating. It had gotten him in trouble, this persistence.

  “She was dating Solano, I hear.”

  “They had broken up.”

  “These things happen.”

  “I guess.”

  “It must be hard for the parents, though. I mean she gets drunk, she falls in the water.”

  “If that’s what happened.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If Nick Antonelli is willing to accept it, maybe you should, too.”

  Marilyn took a sip of her wine. She had never been one to be less than blunt, but he didn’t mind that. She was a beautiful woman. She had untied her hair, and her skin had a flush, healthy look, here in the candlelight. Her hair had just started to gray, and you could see the white, the silver, mixed in with the auburn and black. The light pooled in her dark eyes, and he wanted to touch her face.

  “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Prospero Realty—they put together a deal for Antonelli recently?”

  She nodded.

  “Was it Beatrice?”

  “No, no,” she laughed. “This was old boy stuff. Antonelli worked with her father. He worked with Joe.”

  “I wondered if you know anything about that.”

  She gave him the look then. She pursed her lips and put her wine down. Those dark eyes of hers were even darker, and he wanted even more to reach across the table. To touch her. To not stop touching.

  “So that’s why you wanted to talk with me?”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “It’s just like you,” she said.

  “No, it wasn’t that.”

  “I thought you were off the case. I thought you were done.”

  “Just table talk,” he said. “Curiosity—it’s only human.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s the dead. That’s who you’re interested in. That’s all you’ve ever been interested in. Angela t
he beautiful. Angela the perfect.” She snarled. “But let me tell you something. They’re always perfect when they’re dead.”

  She stopped then. He knew how Marilyn was. She let loose sometimes and you saw the heat in her, the quick flash. But sooner or later, she would come around. She wouldn’t apologize, though. She never apologized.

  They were quiet for a while. They drank their wine, they ate their food, and Dante could see the heat in her and feel the attraction between them. He had been with Angie when he was young, and that was one kind of thing, but Marilyn and Dante had gotten together when they were older, and that was something different. They were entwined in ways that were not so easy to unravel.

  “Antonelli bought the old Waterhouse Building out in China Basin,” Marilyn said at last. “The deal was just finalized.”

  Dante knew the complex. The place had been damaged back in the ’89 quake—and had been sitting unoccupied for years. The site was unstable, and the building needed all kinds of environmental retrofit. It had changed hands a number of times in the last decade. The last owner had gotten part of the complex up to code, but had to bail out before finishing the job.

  “What’s he going to do with it? It’s going to cost him a fortune to fix.”

  “There’s such a shortage of office space—it’s worth the investment now. Plus Antonelli’s got some kind of deal with Solano Enterprises. They signed a long-term lease.”

  Dante remembered Barbara Antonelli had mentioned something along these lines, back when he first visited their house. Nick had looked uncomfortable and Solano, later, had skirted the subject altogether.

  “My understanding, the computer business—the money’s tightening up.”

  “It’s just a blip.”

  “An arrow, straight up.”

  “Sure.”

  “Everybody gets rich.”

  “That’s right. Be a cynic if you want.”

  Around them, voices were subdued. They were into prime time, but the crowd was slack. Not empty, but not what it had been these last months. The owner stood surveying the café, and though it had to be good in a way—a slow night now and then, a little time to rest, to work the back office—he looked disconsolate. Then the waiter came over to refill their wineglasses, and just for a minute, for no reason at all, Dante had a feeling like old times. Or what he imagined of old times. The world outside passing, all the moments slipping away, but here, now, at this table, this food in front of you, this drink, for a little while, you held the tide. That business outside didn’t matter. Marilyn’s face glowed in the candlelight, the passing shadows fell against the window, and for a minute, anyway, he was happy.