Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (41 page)

"Unless something went wrong with the stunt."

"Like what?"

I shrugged.

"So what's left?" he asked.

"Tracy's mother has the impression something was weighing on her
mind before she disappeared," I said. "Tracy indicated that she thought
she'd turned into a bad person."

Larkey's eyes flickered with interest.

I asked, "Do you know what that might have been all about?"

He got up and moved back toward the exercise bike, but instead of
riding it again, he balanced on the seat, feet on the handlebars.
"Maybe the business was destroying her youthful idealism."

"It sounded like more than that. She mentioned a 'sin of omission'—a
situation she hadn't dealt with that could hurt someone
she cared about."

He was silent, compressing his lips in thought. "Ms.— what's your
name?"

"McCone, but you can call me Sharon."

"Sharon, a club like this is a little world all its own… sort of a
scaled down version of the real world, only it operates at a much
higher level of intensity. Most of my people are young, and a fair
number of them are highly creative. They thrive on excitement, drama,
intrigue—and if some doesn't come along naturally, they'll conjure it
up. So you get undercurrents, rumors, secrets. Everybody's up to
something, but they're not letting on what it is because usually it's
pretty mundane, and if people find out, the fun'll be over."

Larkey paused before continuing: "I'm used to that; Hollywood's the
same way, although the stakes are higher. So I try to ignore what goes
on here. I've got other interests, the Potrero Medical Clinic, for
instance. I keep out of what goes on here, and by and large nobody
tries to drag me in on it. But just before Tracy disappeared, I had the
sense something was wrong here. I couldn't put my finger on it, but the
atmosphere was more frenetic than usual."

"Can you be more specific?"

"It was just a higher level of intensity—and it didn't feel good."

"Did you sense it in all your employees or just certain ones?"

He considered. "Well, when something like that starts going around,
it spreads like brushfire. But if I had to name the ones who were most
caught up in it, I'd say Tracy and our bartender Marc Emmons."

"Tracy's boyfriend? Not the guy at the bar tonight?"

"God, no. Marc still works here, but that's not him."

"Which one is he?"

"Marc's the not-terribly-funny fat boy onstage." Larkey flashed his
famous foxy grin. "Why do you think I'm back here pedaling my ass off?
I can't stand to watch him work. But it's the kind of thing that goes
over with the crowd we attract these days."

"He wasn't one of your performers when Tracy disappeared?"

"No, although he was a hopeful. I kept telling him he ought to stick
to tending bar."

"Why on earth did you give him a chance, then?"

"That was my partner Rob Soriano's bright idea. He thought it would
be good publicity to let him fill in for Tracy. Anguished boyfriend
helps the show go on while he waits for news of his beloved." Larkey
made a disgusted face.

"Well then, why do you keep him?"

"What can I tell you? They like the sucker."

I was about to comment on the level of his clientele's taste when
the door opened and a man's voice said, "Jay, do you have a minute to
go over those loan papers?" Seeing me, the new arrival stopped on the
threshold.

He was a tall, well-built man wearing a tuxedo and steel-rimmed
glasses. He held himself with soldierly precision, shoulders squared,
arms and spine rigid. His hair was clipped short, in a flattop style
that I'd noticed had been making a comeback in certain conservative
circles of late, and was so uniformly dark brown that it had to have
been dyed. I judged his age to be in the early fifties.

"Speak of the devil," Larkey murmured. More loudly, he said,
"Sharon, this is Rob Soriano. Rob, Sharon McCone. She's a private
investigator working on the Bobby Foster case."

For a moment Soriano's square-jawed face was blank. "Foster… oh,
right. The kid who murdered Tracy Kostakos."

"Well, it seems there's a difference of opinion on that—"

Larkey broke off as the phone buzzed. He snatched it up and barked,
"Yes?" After listening for a few seconds, he said irritably, "I'll be
right out." As he moved toward the door, he said to Soriano and me,
"Sorry. Trouble with some drunk at the bar wanting credit. I'll be
back."

Rob Soriano eyed me curiously. "Investigator, eh?" he finally said.

"Yes, for All Souls Legal Cooperative." I remained where I was, my
feet still propped on the desk drawer.

"Never heard of them."

"A lot of people haven't. Mr. Soriano, did you know Tracy Kostakos?"

"Not well. I caught her act a few times. She had a nice little
talent."

"What about Bobby Foster?"

"He was just one of the kids who parked cars."

"Are you an active partner in Café Comedie?"

"No, I prefer to keep a low profile. My wife enjoys the glamour,
such as it might be."

"Is it a profitable enterprise?"

"So-so."

"It's certainly crowded tonight."

"We manage to pack them in. Comedy's hot in San Francisco, and
people like clubs. Gives them a chance to dress up, get out, be seen
doing the 'in' thing. But the real profit isn't in the small
independent clubs; it's in the franchises like the Improv."

I recalled that an Improv club had opened downtown recently.
"They're a chain?"

"Some people call them the 'Baskin-Robbins of comedy,' Squeaky-clean
stuff, no offensive material; they're tied in to a couple of TV shows.
Good clubs, but they really have more appeal to tourists or
suburbanites than locals. But to get back to your question, Café
Comedie is more or less Jay's hobby. Some people retire and play golf;
Jay became a champion of young
aspiring comics."

"When you came in, you mentioned loan papers, and I see there are
real estate contracts here on Jay's desk. Is he thinking of expanding
or changing locations?"

A smile flickered across his thin lips, then vanished as quickly as
it had appeared. "You're quite interested in Jay's affairs. But it's no
secret: he and I have a second partnership, in real estate development.
We've been buying up SoMa properties and holding them to see which way
things go here."

The SoMa real estate market, I had heard, was a fluctuating one
whose eventual direction could mold the development of San Francisco
business for decades to come. The area was currently caught in a
tug-of-war between those who advocated increasing the number of
industrial and service businesses, and an older community of residents
and artists— including the clubs—who favored maintaining the status
quo. Multibillion-dollar developments such as the Mission Bay complex
and Yerba Buena Gardens had served to stimulate property trading, and
once-low rents had risen tenfold in only a dozen years.

"What do you mean—holding?" I asked.

"Just as it sounds. We're maintaining the existing structures and
renting them out. We'll develop the properties after the city adopts
definitive growth controls. I've a theory that runs contrary to what
most developers would tell you: too much money has been pumped into
commercial property in the last few years. There's bound to be a
downswing. I've always survived the down cycles by buying undervalued
parcels and holding onto them until the upswing. That's the policy Jay
and I are—"

The office door opened. I looked that way, expecting to see Larkey.
A woman stood there instead. She was tall, close to six feet, and clad
in a long red leather coat, boots, and a floppy red hat. Black curls
framed a face whose handsomeness was
marred by a slash of blood-red lipstick. She wore numerous rings, a
great deal of Giorgio perfume, and a suddenly sour expression. After
she recovered from her initial surprise at seeing a stranger in
Larkey's chair, her eyes flicked over me appraisingly, then dismissed
me as no competition.

The look told me more about her than she'd probably care for me to
know: she was one of that type who don't like other women, would have
no close women friends. To her the rest of us represented the enemy,
who might steal her man or her place in the spotlight. I instantly
distrust a woman like her, just as I do a man who dislikes others of
his gender.

Rob Soriano seemed amused by the look. He said, "Kathy, this is
Sharon McCone. She's a private investigator working on the Kostakos
murder. Sharon—my wife, Kathy."

Kathy Soriano frowned at me. "I thought the Kostakos case was a dead
issue, pun intended." Before I could reply, she added, "Look, Rob, we
need to check out the new girl in the ten-o'clock slot. Where's Jay?"

"Right behind you," Larkey's voice said. He pushed around her and
said apologetically to me, "Sorry I had to cut our conversation short.
Can we continue it another time?"

I stood up and came around the desk. "Sure. If it's okay with you, I
want to talk with Marc Emmons and your parking attendants. I'll check
back with you later."

Larkey gave me a card printed with both his numbers at the club and
at home. The four of us left the office and went down the hall, Kathy
prattling about how she and Rob didn't think the new comedian in the
ten-o'clock slot was going to work out. Wasn't it a pity, she said,
that the Kostakos case really was a dead issue? The little girl had
shown a lot of talent.

"I'll never forget the routine about the feminist. It wasn't even
what she said but how she said it: 'If God had meant for us to
have hairy armpits, would She have given us Nair?'" Rob Soriano grunted
in annoyance and strode ahead of us. Larkey said, "I hate it when you
mimic her like that. It's as if she's right here with us—but she's not."

"Oh, Jay, lighten up!"

Larkey didn't reply, merely hunched his shoulders inside his sweat
suit. Whether the woman was embarrassing him or had seriously upset
him, I couldn't tell. When we entered the club itself, he winked at me
and followed the Sorianos to a reserved table at the rear.

I went to stand by the bar, watching the new comedian begin her
routine until the busy barkeep could get to me. She was actually pretty
funny, delivering a rapid-fire commentary on some of the more
outrageous headlines in the tabloid newspapers; I made a mental note to
tell Ted Smailey he should catch her act—quickly, in case Kathy and Rob
Soriano's opinion of it prevailed.

The bartender spoke over my shoulder. I declined a drink and asked
where I could find Marc Emmons.

"He left as soon as he finished his routine." The man paused. "Funny
about that—he asked me if Jay was free, and I said he was talking to a
private eye about Tracy. I thought he'd be excited, want to sit in on
the conversation, but all of a sudden he split."

Now, that was odd, I thought. "Did you know Tracy?"

"Some. But the younger crowd, they keep to themselves."

"What about Bobby Foster?"

"Not too well, but from what I saw of him, he was a nice kid."

"Who was he friends with here at the club, besides Tracy?"

The bartender thought a moment. "I guess that would be Lisa
Mclntyre, one of the waitresses."

"Is she here tonight?"

"No, Lisa quit a long time ago. I don't know where she is now."

I could check on Lisa Mclntyre's address with Larkey in the morning.
I thanked the bartender and went outside.

It had started to drizzle, but the wind no longer blew and the air
felt warmer. The pair of parking attendants I'd seen earlier stood
under the canopy. I went up to them and said I'd like to ask them some
questions.

At it turned out, neither had known Bobby Foster or Tracy Kostakos;
they'd hired on at about the same time, only six months before. They
were able to explain how the parking setup worked, however.

"There's a lot over on Brannan," the older one, a dark-haired man
with a beard, said. "City law says restaurants and clubs can't use
street parking, so Larkey rents space. Thing is, it's shared, and on
the busy nights it gets pretty hairy in this neighborhood. So you bend
the law some. First you try the lot. If it's full, you find a place on
the street, tag the keys with the location. Jog back here, do it all
over again." He held up his foot, which was shod in a good brand of
running shoe.

"What about the keys? Do you keep them on you?"

His coworker, a redhead, went over to a metal box hanging
unobtrusively from the top rail of the fence that enclosed the area
containing the wrought-iron tables. "Too much chance of losing them or
being on break when the owner wants to leave." He opened the hinged
front of the box; inside were rows of keys hanging on hooks. The labels
above them designated various streets.

"Does this box lock?" I asked.

"No."

"So anybody could reach in there and take a set of keys."

"Sure. But there's usually somebody here—we've got a couple of guys
off sick tonight—and you'd have to know about the box to begin with."

"Would other employees of the club know?"

 He looked at his coworker,
who shrugged. "Probably, if they bothered to watch us work."

A Porsche pulled up at the front of the canopy. The bearded man said
to the redhead, "Your turn."

I watched him hand out a woman in a fur coat, then take the keys
from the man. "Is business always this slow?" I asked the remaining
attendant.

"No. Christmas holidays, a lot of people busy with parties or out of
town. But it's never like North Beach. That's a bitch. You get crazy
drivers, drunks, dangerous characters. There's a lot of hostility
coming from the customers and other valets. Private parties in places
like Pacific Heights are a little better, but folks up there think the
street belongs to them and call the cops if you park next to their
driveways. Plus the guests look at you like you're some kind of a
servant and stiff you on the tip. This is a good gig here; I'm gonna
try to stick around."