by Jack Lynch
“The girl?” I asked, glancing toward the lower section of the room.
“Knows nothing.”
“What day of the week did you get the first card?”
“Same as this time,” he told me, stuffing card and clipping back into the envelope. “Saturday.”
“What exactly does Moon do for you?”
“He’s sort of an all-round handyman. Bodyguard, companion, errand boy. We been together a lot of years. Anyhow, what do you make of it?”
“Sounds like a bad practical joke. As you say, Moon strikes a person as being able to shift for himself. Still, I think I’d tell him, if I were you. Maybe suggest he stay inside with a good book for a couple days.”
Barker dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to let him know, but he’ll do what he wants. I give everybody the day off on Mondays. The restaurant’s dark. People do what they want. Even Bobbie.”
“I thought she was your girlfriend.”
“She is, but she gets paid to be, so she gets a day off like everyone else.”
“How do you feel about Moon? Think he’s in danger?”
“I don’t know. Like with me, last week, I don’t think whoever held the gun was really trying to make a hit. I was wide open at first, and they shot a lot of times at me.”
“Then why let it bother you?”
“Because if I really got some enemies out there—I mean somebody who really wants to hurt me some—I do have a weak spot. Me and Moon are rough sorts from way back, and I’m not worried about us. But there’s a little girl, my stepdaughter. Beverly Jean. I promised her mother I’d take real good care of her. I got Beverly Jean stashed in a private boarding school up in San Rafael. If somebody’s out to hurt me, and they find out about Beverly Jean, they’ll be in one swell position to do it.”
TWO
“Where’s the little girl’s mother?”
He was thoughtful for a while, with elbows on the bar and hands over his ears, remembering things.
“She died of cancer.” He looked down at his hands and laid the cigar aside. “It wasn’t fair. She was a young woman. Not a whole lot older than Bobbie over there.”
He had to take time out for his thoughts. I half turned and looked down to where Bobbie now was going click-click-thwuck at the pool table. She knew how to shoot.
“Soon after that happened,” Barker continued, “I moved to San Francisco here with Moon and Beverly Jean. Decided to go into sort of semiretirement. I got the Chop House, of course, and I got a piece of one of them topless clubs around the corner on Broadway. And I got a couple of massage parlors I try to keep halfway legit. Staff ’em with young girls who never have to worry about working up a sweat from all the clothes they’re wearing, but I tell ’em if they do any whoring it has to be on their own time and they gotta know how to work a guy’s muscles so they feel good. It’s the same with the restaurant. I give the customers an honest shake. Same goes for the people I do business with. That’s why I can’t think of any reason for anyone to pull this sort of dumb stunt.”
“Maybe it’s not local action. What did you do before you came to San Francisco, and where did you do it?”
He hocked a couple of times and counted the black hairs on the back of his hands. “You wanna know a lot, don’t you?”
“Sure. And if you don’t want to talk about it, maybe I’m getting close to where your trouble is.”
He looked up, his face ready for a little plea bargaining. “I’m not really ashamed of it. It’s just that what’s taken for regular in one town might sound a little under the table in the next.”
“Sure. I’ve been to lots of towns myself. Don’t be bashful.”
“Did you ever hear of a town called Sand Valley? Not here in California. Over by the Sanduski Mountains.”
I said I hadn’t, but tried to remember what I heard one time about it.
“Not surprising,” Barker told me. “It’s just another semilegit gambling and whorehouse town. I was into some other things, but that’s all in the past now. Nobody around here knows about it. Except Moon, of course.”
“Sounds like the sort of town where you could leave some hard feelings behind.”
“Maybe. But not rock-bottom hard. Just sort of.” He tapped the grief cards on the bar top and filed them back below. “But I don’t think it’s tied to this business.”
“Why not?”
“Because the sort of people I knew there don’t operate that way. I mean they might try setting a torch to the Chop House in the middle of the night, but not this other. They don’t have the imagination, for one thing.”
I shrugged. “Okay, Mr. Barker, assuming you’re right. What exactly would you be hiring me to do?”
“Two things. I want you to find out who’s sending the cards. Second, I want to know if it poses any threat to my stepdaughter, Beverly Jean. And for now, I want you to concentrate on the here and now. San Francisco. See if there’s someone who feels I’m crowding them, without me even knowing it.”
“Would it have to be a business angle?”
“What else?”
“What sort of social life do you lead?”
“I don’t have any. I mean I don’t have what you’d call friends. Just acquaintances, and all them from my businesses.”
“What about girls?”
“There’s just Bobbie over there. And like I say, that’s on sort of a business basis too. I prefer it that way.”
“What about before Bobbie?”
“No one. She’s the first one I took up with since Beverly Jean’s mother died. I used to see a couple call girls, but that was strictly business.”
I shook my head.
“What’s wrong?”
“If you’re telling me the truth, it seems the past, and Sand Valley, is just screaming to get your attention.”
“Maybe. But I want the local angle checked first. Then we’ll see what happens.”
I figured it was a waste of time, but if that’s what he wanted to pay for, that’s what he’d get. We discussed my fee and he gave me the names and addresses of his businesses. I asked him to give me a note, introducing me to the people who worked for him. I also told him I wanted to visit his stepdaughter in San Rafael. Right then, if it could be arranged.
“How come?”
“Your major aim seems to be to defuse any threat that could be coming in her direction. I want to see how well cared for she is.”
He rubbed his chin and cleared his throat.
“Defuse,” he said, savoring the word as if he’d found it in a box of Cracker Jack. “I like that. Yeah. That’s exactly what I want. But I got an accountant coming over here at one o’clock, and Moon scares the other kids up there. I’ll have Bobbie take you. She gets on well with the kid. She oughta. She’s goofy enough.”
“I’d rather go up by myself.”
“It wouldn’t work. You gotta be with somebody they know the first time or they don’t let you in.” He turned and bellowed for Bobbie. She rejoined us, gave me another smile and rested her elbows on the bar.
“What’s up, chief?”
“I want you to drive Mr. Bragg here up to San Rafael to meet Beverly Jean. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“That’s a good girl.” One of his hands flashed across the bar and pinched one of the pleasant cups beneath her T-shirt. Pinched it hard.
“Jesus Christ, Armando! That hurt!”
It must have. Her lip quivered. The pain almost brought tears to her eyes. I felt a little uncomfortable.
“So what?” Barker told her. “You get paid plenty for it.”
She turned and left the room quickly. It was none of my business, but I’m old fashioned enough so that I had to say something.
“Do you charm all the girls that way?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Some people might take offense, is all. Like you said about differences between towns. The girls in Sand Valley might think that sort of stunt
is a scream. Most of the girls in San Francisco wouldn’t. I could think of a couple, if you did that to them, who might get a gun and wait for you some night outside the Chop House.”
The challenge went out of his face. He just coughed and waved a hand. “Forget it. She’s just a dumb little twitch who goes around asking for it anyway, the way she dresses and all. And like I said, there haven’t been any other girls in San Francisco.”
Bobbie came back wearing a tan car coat and black beret. She’d regained her composure. She kissed Barker on the cheek, and we went out to a Porsche parked in a driveway alongside the house.
“Want to drive?” she asked.
“No thanks. I’d probably drop the gear box or something.”
We got in and she backed out. We drove on down to Lombard and turned left toward the bridge.
“Does he do much of that?”
“Of what?”
“Pinch you that way.”
She wrinkled her nose. “What the hell. He’s got some weird sides to him, same as all of us. And like he said, I’m well paid.”
“I hope so. Do you spend much time with him, Bobbie?”
“Sure. Most every day. And evenings, when he isn’t working at the restaurant.” She dug into one coat pocket and brought out a stick of chewing gum. With the heels of her hands on the steering wheel, she deftly unwrapped it.
“What does he do, run the bar?”
“No, he’s a cook. Once or twice a week he likes to spend time in the kitchen. It’s sort of like therapy for him. Helps to chase the grunts away.”
“He’s moody?”
“Yeah.”
“How come?”
We were on Doyle Drive approaching the bridge. She glanced at me, her jaw working on the chewing gum. “You ask a lot of questions for practically being a stranger.”
“Does it seem that way? I’m just curious, is all.”
“Is that it? What do you do for a living?”
“A little of this and that. Maybe I’ll tell you later, if you’re good.”
“How good? You want to pinch the other one?”
I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not, but I had to grin. “It’s not exactly what I had in mind.”
She gave me another fast glance and whipped around a Golden Gate Transit bus headed for Marin County. “I can’t always tell with men. I guess I’m still sort of dumb in that department. Do I turn you off or something?”
“No. I just haven’t given it any thought. But we’re way off the track. You were going to tell me what makes Armando gloomy.”
“I was?” She thought a moment. “Actually, I don’t know. I think he’s just bored, mostly.”
“With four businesses to look after?”
“Three, really. He only has a part interest in the Palm Leaf Club. He doesn’t really do all that much looking after any of them. He’s pretty good at hiring smart cookies to run things for him. And he has an accountant to keep a sharp eye on the figures. So mostly he sits around being bored.”
“Can’t you brighten his hours?”
“Sure, for Christ’s sake, what do you think I’m paid for? But he’s a man of middle age and more. We can’t spend all the time in the sack.”
“So what else do you do?”
“We go to the races a lot. Hang around other dives in North Beach, and a jazz club over on Fillmore. It’s almost like he’s playing a role, instead of getting really interested in something to occupy his mind.”
“I had sort of the same impression,” I told her. “He and Moon both come on like a couple of old Chicago overcoats. They talk and carry on as if they stay up nights watching old gangster movies on TV to see how they should act.”
She nodded. “You see the problem.”
When we reached San Rafael she stayed on the freeway until we were past the center of town, then turned off and drove to the eastern outskirts and the Mission Academy for Girls. It was in a charming setting of redwood trees and greenery, but it also had a high stone wall around the place with barbed wire fencing atop that and regularly spaced signs warning that the wire was electrified. There was a metal drop bar across the entrance drive and beside that a little post house with a private guard inside. He recognized Bobbie and raised the barrier.
“What the hell sort of girls do they keep in this place?”
“All kinds—big, little, in between.”
Once past the walls the place lost its custodial appearance. The grounds were well tended, a blend of wooded picnic areas, lawns, beds of fuchsia and bushes of bougainvillaea. We passed tennis courts and a swimming pool and clusters of gangling girls in their early teens. There were groups of visiting adults, some with wicker hampers, and the air sang with the squeals and shouts of kids having a good time.
A big, gray pile of old stones turned out to be the Administration Building. Inside I met a round-faced woman in her fifties named Marge who looked like everybody’s mom. She took us out back past a play area with swings and slides and tether balls to a clearing with a couple of badminton nets. Beverly Jean turned out to be one of the onlookers on the sideline with a racket in one hand. She was a long, skinny kid in white shorts and blouse, with elfin features and black button eyes. When she saw Bobbie she came running over to us.
“Hi, Aunt Bobbie,” she cried, giving me the once-over. “Where’s Uncle Armando?”
“He said he’ll be up to see you tomorrow, Beejay. He’s tied up with business today, but he sent Mr. Bragg here to say hello for him.”
“Oh?” She studied me some more, then extended one hand for me to shake. “How do you do, Mr. Bragg. I’m Beverly Jean Barker, age eleven going on twelve and I like it here very much, thank you.”
“Happy to meet you, Beverly Jean. And I’m glad to hear you like it around here, but how come you told me all that?”
She put one hand on her hip. “It’s just the next thing adults always ask. I figure we can get a jump on the conversation if I just go ahead and say it first.”
Marge excused herself with a smile and returned to the main building. Bobbie turned to watch the badminton game.
“Would you like me to show you around the grounds, Mr. Bragg?”
“Maybe once around the Administration Building, anyway.”
I told Bobbie to wait for us and we strolled off.
“I’ve never been in a place like this before, Beverly Jean. What’s it like?”
“It’s just fine. Now, at least.”
“You didn’t like it at first?”
“No. I missed my mother an awful lot. They told me she’d gone away. But after I’d been here a little while, Mrs. Garver—that’s my special ‘auntie’ here—she explained that my mother had been very sick, and that it hurt her so that God had let her go join Him in Heaven, so that she wouldn’t hurt anymore.”
We walked in silence for a moment.
“I guess that made it better.”
“Oh, yes,” she told me. “Until then I thought she’d just gone off because she didn’t like me, or something. I wish Uncle Armando had explained it to me in the beginning.”
“Some things are awkward for a man to do.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “once I knew what really happened I was able to quit worrying about that, and now they just keep us so busy, and I have so many friends, and Uncle Armando comes to visit and is always taking me places—I can hardly catch my breath anymore.”
She said it as if she wished her life would slow down a little. We made the loop of the building while the girl carried on a stream of chatter about her projects and her friends and the pet skunk they had in one of the outbuildings.
“Ever have anything to do with boys around here?”
“The older girls have exchange dances with the boys from Drexal. That’s a private school up near Hamilton. And we all get together for picnics and things from time to time. It’s such a bore.”
“You don’t like boys?”
“Not the ones my age. They’re all so young.”
“Get what you wanted?” Bobbie asked.
“Some of it.” Inside I asked Marge to take me to the ranking duty officer. She led us to an office down the hall that looked more like a sewing room and introduced us to a Mrs. Carrier, a spare, dark woman in her forties with a ready smile and the title of assistant superintendent. We went around in a sort of amicable but guarded Virginia reel, with her wanting to know my relationship to Beverly Jean and my trying to pump her about the Mission Academy for Girls. I told her I represented relatives of the girl who wanted to be assured that she was content and that her stepfather, Armando Barker, was doing right by the kid. I hoped, while I was telling her all this, that she didn’t see the fleeting glance of wonder that Bobbie gave me.
Mrs. Carrier smiled, as if I were one of the slow kids.
“Anybody who spends the amount of money that Mr. Barker spends, to keep a child here, is doing ‘all right’ by her, Mr. Bragg.”
“Costs a bunch, huh? How much?”
“We just had to raise the rates this term. Inflation, you know. The fee is now somewhat in excess of nine hundred dollars.”
“And how long is the term?”
“Six months. We have a year-round, two-term program. But the nine hundred dollars isn’t for the term. It’s for one month.”
I whistled. “At those prices the kids should get pocket money.”
“They do.”
I nodded. “Well, she seems happy enough. I’m curious about a few other things, though. Does she get off the grounds much, except for when Mr. Barker takes her?”
“Yes. Under supervision, the girls go in small groups to any number of places, depending upon their age level. It might be to the zoo in San Francisco, or an art museum, or the Exploratorium. And we have outings to Bodega Bay and camping trips to Yosemite and ski trips to Lake Tahoe. Sometimes they just take little trips to shop around downtown San Rafael or over in San Francisco. Our efforts, after all, are to expose them to as many experiences as possible, so that when they leave here they will be well-equipped to deal with the vagaries of life.”
