Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (10 page)

"The model is a system of personality classification, based on
whether a person is primarily action oriented, emotional, or
intellectual," he said. "Within the various categories there are three
levels—the healthy, the normative, and the pathological. That's nothing
new; it's a synthesis of various models that have been around for a
long time. What I'm trying to do is explain it in layman's terms as
well as develop guidelines that people can use to move in the direction
of the healthy level."

"A self-help book, right?"

He smiled ruefully. "I know—one more to add to the legion in the
stores. But I've got a lot of confidence in this project; what people
don't realize is that within any one personality category there are
individuals who don't seem to have anything in common because they're
operating at different levels. But all of those—except for the most
severely disturbed—are capable of moving toward the highest level
without making any fundamental changes in who or what they are."

"Can you give me an example of one of these groups?"

"Sure. Think of historical figures, leaders—the good guys. Who comes
to mind?"

"Well, since we've had a shortage of those lately, John Kennedy,
Martin Luther King."

"Okay. Do you know who those people would share a group with? The
Reverend Jim Jones and Charles Manson."

"Good Lord."

"Pathological to healthy. Now this model—" Again he broke off.
"Look, would you like some coffee?"

"Sure, that would be nice." As he stood up, I added, "Let me help
you make it—I'm curious about the rest of this house."

"Strange, isn't it? I still haven't gotten used to it, and I doubt I
ever will."

Kostakos led me around the stairwell to the other side of the
gallery. A dining room opened off it. The walls in there were desert
orange, the table a slab of something that resembled petrified wood.
Tall cacti stood in the corners like entrapped outlaws, their arms
reaching for the sky—or in this case, skylight.

"The southwestern room?" I asked.

"Yes—a decided contrast to the North Polar living room."

Kostakos pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen. It was
large and high ceilinged, with more skylights, more bleached wood and
white walls. The starkness was alleviated by shelves of colorful
cookbooks, a great many hanging baskets, and large bunches of dried red
peppers. Beneath the bentwood table lay an enormous black-and-white
cowhide rug.

"The peppers and baskets carry on the southwestern motif," I said,
"and that rug's definitely Texas."

Kostakos laughed. "This house suffers from an extreme identity
crisis. There's a game room downstairs that's Hollywood kitsch. The
master bedroom's all antlers and moose-hide—north-woods theme. The
guest bedroom's southern— flower prints
and white lace and little lavender-scented pillows. If you woke up in
there, you'd half expect Butterfly McQueen to come sashaying in with
your breakfast tray."

"What in God's name is the owner like?"

"He's a mild-mannered medical researcher at UCSF. But I suspect he
has a rich fantasy life." Kostakos went to the U-shaped workspace at
the end of the room. "What kind of coffee would you like? We have
Brazilian, Zimbabwe, Colombian-Armenian, and Plantation Blend dark
roast."

I was embarrassed to tell him that to me coffee is just coffee,
despite my efforts to educate myself to the contrary.

Kostakos grinned at my confused silence. "I don't care, either.
Coffee's good if it's strong and drinkable. I've been using the dark
roast because there seem to be cases of it in the pantry." He busied
himself with a grinder and beans.

I sat at the table, stooping first to pat the rough cowhide. "About
your personality classifications—which one are you?"

Without hesitation he replied, "My group's the one described as the
intellectuals."

"Fitting, considering you're a professor."

"You'd be surprised how often a person's group doesn't mesh with his
or her profession. But I must say I like my group. We're perceptive,
analytical, produce very original ideas. Some of us have been on the
genius level. Freud, for example." He set the coffeemaker going and
faced me. "Of course, there are those who claim Hitler may have been
one of us."

"That's not too encouraging. I wonder which group I am?"

He got out coffee mugs and set them on the table. Even the mugs in
this house were at odds: one was a caricature of Richard Nixon,
ski-jump nose and all; the other was Jimmy Carter, big white teeth
agleam.

Kostakos regarded me thoughtfully. "I'd have to know you a lot
better to say for sure, but if I were to hazard a guess from
what I've observed of you and from knowing your profession, I'd say
your group is the same as mine."

"Oh, come on! I'm no intellectual."

"That's just a convenient label. You're straightforward, give
evidence of being analytical. You think before you speak, phrase what
you say precisely. In your business, you're certain to be logical and
perceptive. I also sense you might have what's known in psychological
jargon as 'the third ear'—the ability to hear meanings beyond what a
person's actually saying. You've got intuitive and emotional qualities.
You just don't let them get in the way."

He made me sound like quite a sterling character. I basked in the
flattery as he fetched the coffeepot.

"Of course," he added as he poured, "there's another side to our
group, as exemplified by Hitler's presence. We tend to become rigid in
our ideas. We develop theories and won't turn loose of them. We can
become extremists." He replaced the coffeepot on the warmer and sat
across from me.

"I knew it sounded too good to be true." I sampled the coffee and
found it excellent, even to my unsophisticated taste. "How'd you know
that I don't use milk or sugar?"

"It's a characteristic of people in our group." At my incredulous
look, he added, "Actually, I don't use them, and I just forgot to offer
any."

"Those negative things you mentioned, a lot of them are valid for
me," I said. "That rigidity?…"

He nodded.

"Once, right after I'd gotten my degree and couldn't find a job, I
took a personality test to see if I was suited for—don't laugh—a career
in life insurance sales. Do you know what the results said? They said I
could be 'pushy, severe, and dominant.'"

He raised Nixon to me. "That's our group."

"What else can you tell me about us?"

"Well, do you ever get reclusive? Standoffish? Kind of prickly?"

"I've felt that way for close to a year now—as if I've built a wall
around me so nobody can come too close."

"Bad sign. Unhealthy end of the scale. Look out for creeping
paranoia. You may become obsessed with peculiar ideas, feel prey to any
number of indefinable threats. When that happens, insanity with
schizophrenic tendencies lies just around the bend."

I choked on my coffee. "You sound just like a fortune teller I used
to know."

He smiled and patted my hand. "Cheer up. When you go nuts, I'll
recommend a good psychiatrist."

I drank some more coffee, feeling relaxed and companionable and
oddly unwilling to bring the conversation back to the reason I'd come.
But finally I said, "What group was Tracy?"

He was silent, looking down into his cup.

"From what people have told me, she must have inherited your sense
of humor."

"Actually she was more like her mother. Laura has very little sense
of humor, and Tracy didn't have a funny bone in her body."

I thought of what Jay Larkey had told me—that for a funny lady,
Tracy had taken herself very seriously. "How do you explain her
becoming a comedian, then?"

"That was an outgrowth of her analytical ability. She knew what made
other people laugh, and how to create it. She just didn't laugh much
herself. Sometimes people standing on the outside see what's going on
inside more clearly than those of us who are there." He was silent for
a while, then looked at me. "You did it, didn't you?"

"Did what?"

"Got me talking about her, even though I said I wouldn't."

"It wasn't all that calculated."

"I didn't think it was. But now that you've got me started, I might
as well go on. Let's go back to the living room, though; it's too
cheerful here to talk about somebody I loved who's dead." He listened
to his words, then shook his head. "On the other hand, Tracy's memory
is so warm that it might do a great deal for that icy room up front."

We went back to our unsittable chairs by the fireplace, and George
talked of his daughter. He talked not in terms of his psychological
model, or even with the detachment of one in his field, but as a
still-grieving father.

Tracy's birth had been premature; for a couple of days he and Laura
had feared they might lose her. But her will had proved larger than her
tiny body, and she quickly grew strong.

As soon as she could talk, she'd clamored for a baby sister. Laura
could have no more children, but it wasn't something a small child
could understand.

She'd had five kittens. Each had met with disaster— speeding cars,
leukemia, the neighbor's dog. After the fifth died, she'd announced to
her parents that she never wanted another pet. And she never acquired
one.

George had worried for a while because she always had more imaginary
friends than real ones. But she'd outgrown them, and when he'd first
seen her perform comedy, he'd realized what fertile material those old
pals had become.

She'd gotten pregnant during her senior year in high school; he and
Laura had gone along with her decision to have an abortion. It had left
no apparent emotional scars.

They'd both known she was unhappy at Foothill Junior College, and
had noted her growing preoccupation with comedy with a certain unease.
When she'd announced her desire to move to San Francisco, he'd been
opposed at first. But Laura had convinced him of the damage an
overprotective family can do, and in the end he'd given in.

No, he said, he didn't resent Laura for pressuring him to allow the
move that eventually led to Tracy's death.

No, he and Tracy hadn't talked much in the last three or four years
of her life. He'd just assumed it was part of the natural separation
process.

Had she abused their credit cards? He'd never had that impression,
but Laura was the one who handled the bills, and she did have a
tendency to be overindulgent where Tracy was concerned.

No, he guessed he hadn't really known his daughter. Not at the time
of her death.

Yes, he honestly believed she was dead. He had no illusions, unlike
Laura.

"Why?" I asked.

"I went to the trial. I watched the evidence being presented day
after day. There's no doubt she's dead."

His hands were locked together between his bluejeaned knees; the
knuckles showed white through his tan. His eyes were more greenish now;
when I tried to hold his gaze, it slipped away from mine.

Finally he sighed. "Maybe it's more that I have to believe it."

"Why?"

"Because if she's not dead, she has done a monstrous thing. If she's
not dead, she is someone I don't want to acknowledge as my own."

After a moment he added, "Please don't find Tracy alive, Sharon. And
if you do, don't bring her back to me."

After I left George Kostakos, I stopped at a phone booth and called
Café Comedie. Larkey wasn't in, but the woman who answered gave me the
last address and phone number on file for Lisa Mclntyre, the waitress
who had been Bobby Foster's friend. I called the number but found it
now belonged to someone else, who had never heard of Mclntyre. Next I
tried to call Marc Emmons but got only a machine. Rae had had similar
results the day before when she'd tried to arrange an appointment for
me, so I decided the best place to catch Emmons would be at the club
that evening.

Directory Assistance had no current listing for Mclntyre, but her
old address wasn't far away, on Pacific Avenue just off Polk Street. I
decided to drive over there and see if anyone knew where she'd moved;
possibly one of the neighbors was still in touch with her.

The building on Pacific was a fairly large one, part commercial,
with a furniture reupholstering workshop, bakery, and drugstore
downstairs and apartments on the second floor. As I'd expected, none of
the mailboxes in the vestibule bore Mclntyre's name. I rang the manager
but received no response;
next I buzzed the seven remaining apartments. Two people were home;
neither had heard of Mclntyre. None of the people working in the
downstairs businesses remembered her, either; they didn't pay too much
attention to the tenants, one man told me.

I decided to turn the search for Mclntyre over to Rae. Since
separating from her husband, my assistant had displayed boundless
enthusiasm for all sorts of routine chores. Besides, Mclntyre wasn't
really central to my investigation; I only wanted to talk with her to
see if she could shed some light on the unusually high level of tension
that Larkey had sensed in his younger employees shortly before Tracy
vanished.

I went back to the MG and considered what to do next. Leora Whitsun,
Foster's mother, was visiting relatives in Los Angeles and wouldn't be
back until New Year's Day, when she was scheduled for duty at the
Potrero Medical Clinic. There were other friends of Tracy's I could
interview— members of her improv group, for instance—but they struck me
as even more peripheral than Mclntyre. About all they'd be able to tell
me was what kind of person Tracy had been, and I felt I already had
enough of a handle on that. Besides, the Friday before New Year's Eve
was a bad time to find people at home.

I thought some more about Marc Emmons: his answering machine always
being on, his abrupt departure from the club the night before. It could
be he was monitoring calls, ducking me. Since his address on Potrero
Hill wasn't too much of a detour on my way home, I might as well swing
by there and check for signs of his presence.