Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (8 page)

I moved behind the desk and sat. It was mounded with papers, many of
which appeared to have to do with a real-estate transaction.

Larkey continued to pedal. "I'm doing a public-TV fundraiser on New
Year's Eve," he said through gritted teeth. "Part of the proceeds'll
benefit the Potrero Medical Clinic— one of my charities. Otherwise I
wouldn't do it. I hate to go on looking like an overweight, washed-up
comedian. I thought maybe I could ride off some of the Christmas flab
on this thing."

"You don't look overweight to me. And you're certainly not what I'd
call washed up."

"Then you must have a vision problem, as well as seriously warped
perspective. I'm both, and I know it." He paused, puffing slightly and
wiping sweat from his forehead. "Thing is, I think I should care, but
deep down I really don't. I've got enough money, the club is turning a
profit, and for the first time in my life I'm enjoying myself."

"You didn't enjoy yourself when you had your TV show?"

"Shit, no. You know what pressure you're under in that life? The
punishing schedule? The lack of privacy? Your time's not your own,
everybody wants a piece of you. When I was practicing dentistry up in
Red Bluff, I would have killed for that life. But once I was actually
in it…" He shook his head.

"How long were you a dentist?"

"Five years. My short-lived career was a disaster. I was funny, and
who wants funny in their dentist? Cavities and plaque are serious
stuff. So there I was, tossing out one-liners when my patients couldn't
laugh because I had my hands shoved in their mouths, cackling my head
off while I was performing root canals. My practice fell off so much
that I decided I might as well move down here and take a crack at the
funny business."

"Well, you certainly succeeded."

"Yeah, but you pay a price for that success. I tried to warn Tracy
about that, but she wouldn't listen. Any more than I would have at her
age."

"You were close to her?"

"In a fatherly sort of way, like I am with all the kids who work
here. I care about my people—pay them well, offer a full medical and
dental package through the Potrero Clinic. Anyway, I tried to advise
Tracy, be her mentor. Not that she needed one."

"Why not?"

"She had her career well in hand. For a funny lady, Tracy didn't
have much of a sense of humor when it came to getting ahead in the
world. Way back when she was still in junior college, she read every
damn book there is on stand-up. Watched every comedy show on TV, went
regularly to the clubs, the competitions. Took notes, too."

I'd seen the shelf of books on comedy in her bedroom; they were well
thumbed.

Larkey went on, "She was constantly refining her act. You know how
she worked?"

"I gather she created characters, like Carol Burnett."

"Yeah—contemporary women, the situations they find themselves in,
their problems. Social commentary that made you laugh but also made you
think. Offstage she'd discuss them very seriously, as if they were real
people: Would Annie really do such-and-such? Was it in character for
Lizzie to go out with so-and-so? When she tried out a new routine,
she'd have somebody videotape it, and she'd study the tape for hours,
concentrating on word choice, small nuances. She approached comedy in a
scientific way."

"I take it that's not how it's usually done."

"Comedy's like any other art form: it comes from deep within, it's
more intuitive than scientific. Most of us just wing it, let our
material evolve. The ones who have to analyze usually don't have much
of a flair to begin with. But Tracy combined the scientific with the
intuitive—with brilliant results."

"If she was that intent on success, do you think she would have just
dropped out of sight? Everything I know about her
indicates she was on the verge of a breakthrough."

He took his feet off the pedals, let them spin to a stop. Then he
got off the bike and sat on a corner of the desk, one leg drawn up on
it, half facing me. "I don't know what to think," he said. "I wish to
hell I did."

"Any ideas?"

"None."

I leaned back in his chair, propping my feet on an open desk drawer.
"I've been trying to think of the typical reasons a twenty-two-year-old
woman disappears," I said. "She's on drugs, or pregnant, or suicidal.
She sees her life as at a dead end, or she's angry at her friends or
family and wants to hurt them. None of those motives fits with what I
know of Tracy."

"No."

"I thought of another reason: maybe her disappearance and kidnapping
was staged as a publicity stunt, to further her career. But that
doesn't wash, because in order for it to have been effective, she'd
have to have surfaced long before this."

"Right. Now she's old, old news."

"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."