While Other People Sleep (18 page)

“Because it's been parked over on Greenwich since Saturday. As you'll remember, we left that night in your MG. My car was having carburetor problems, and I didn't want to risk moving it till I could get Triple-A out to take a look. On Sunday I didn't want the hassle, so I called a cab from your house, had it take me to a rental-car place, and picked up this bag and a few things I needed at a Wal-Mart on my way north.”

And of course the one place the police wouldn't search for a missing person's car was in his own neighborhood.

When I got off the phone with the SFPD, Neal was leafing through the envelopes on the kitchen counter. “Bills,” he muttered, “and there'll be more at the store.”

“Things're that bad?”

“Grim, but I'll survive.” He set them down and glanced at the boarded-up door. “At least that's taken care of. While I was at the coast I called a glazier I know who works cheap, but he couldn't come out till tomorrow. Shar, about this guy who's threatening me—what's going to happen next?”

“We're proceeding with our investigation.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Exercise extra caution away from home. When you're here, there'll be an RKI guard on the door; one will arrive at three this afternoon.”

“All right to call Triple-A and get my car looked at?”

“Sure. I don't think the guy'll try anything in daylight; he doesn't want to get caught. Just be careful.”

“I will. I intend to enjoy life for a long time.”

After a quick stop for a burger, I drove back to the pier and went directly to Ted's office. “Neal's home,” I announced. “I explained everything. He's getting Triple-A out to look at his car, then will phone the store to see how things are, and come here.”

Ted looked both relieved and apprehensive. “He's okay?”

“He's fine. The phone call you got on Monday was designed to panic you. Fortunately, it drove you to do what you should've done two weeks ago.”

“You're not going to let me forget that, are you?”

“No more than you're going to let me forget
my
past transgressions.” I grinned at him and headed for my office.

“Shar, somebody from Get-a-Bug's insisting on talking with you. Line two.”

“From
where?”

“Termite service.”

“I don't have termites—that I know of.” I pressed the second button. “Sharon McCone.”

“Ms. McCone, this is Ellie from Get-a-Bug. I'm calling to see when we can schedule the extermination—”

“Extermination!”

“… The message you left on our machine said you have pests—”

“I have
one
pest, and it would take more than your services to get rid of her.”

“Sharon McCone.”

“Sharon, this is Ed.”

“Ed?”

“Ed Martin, from Gorilla Destruction. We're here at your place and ready to start breaking up the driveway, but I've got to get your signature on the work order.”

“Don't you touch my driveway!”

“But you said our estimate—”

“Don't you let one of your gorillas so much as
step
on my driveway! Oh, Jesus Christ, what's she going to do to me next?”

“Ms. McCone.” The voice was low pitched and formal, oily too. Solemnity overlaid a note of great pleasure. “My heartfelt condolences to you and your family.”

“Condolences? Family? Who is this?”

“Ah, the person who answered my call didn't identify me to you. This is Bradley Sampson, of Sampson and Sampson Funeral Directors, returning your call.”

I ground my teeth, said, “My call.”

“Ms. McCone, we know how distracted you must be in your time of need, but Sampson and Sampson is here to help you. Your message, left on our answering-machine tape over the noon hour, says you anticipate requiring our services imminently.”

I pressed the point of my pencil into the legal pad I'd been writing on so hard that it broke. “Mr. Sampson—”

“Ms. McCone, I hear the stress in your voice. The loss or the imminent loss of a loved one—”

“Mr. Sampson, do you have the tape?”

“The … tape?”

“The answering-machine tape!”

“Why, yes.”

“Play it for me, please.”

“A most unusual … certainly.”

Clicks and whirls as he rewound it, and then a voice whose muffled quality could have been attributed to grief: “My name is Sharon McCone. I expect to need your services within a few days. Please call me—”

“Enough!” I shouted. I slammed the receiver into its cradle, got up, and rushed out onto the catwalk. “Enough!” I shouted for all the pier to hear.

Down below, Hank was fetching something from his car. He straightened and ran his hand through his pad of gray-brown hair, frowning. On the opposite catwalk, Tony Nakayama and one of his partners halted their conversation and stared. And Glenna Stanleigh, about to load some film equipment into her Bronco, called, “Sharon? Maybe you could use a cup of that Natural Serenity herbal tea?”

Then we all turned our heads as a car shot through the entrance—Neal's Honda, going much too fast. So fast that if I hadn't already notified the police to cancel the pickup order on him, I'd have sworn they were hot on his bumper.

Neal, Ted, Charlotte, and I stood around the conference room table, staring down at a truly bizarre salad. The wooden bowl that Neal had brought to the pier—one from his own kitchen—contained a mixture of tomatoes, radishes, olives, garbanzo beans, mushrooms—and wilted weeds with dirt clods still attached to their roots. On top of it all was a garnish of dead insects.

The accompanying block-printed note said:
HOW’S THIS FOR A GOURMET MEAL, FAGGOT
?

“About as yummy-looking as barbecued roadkill,” Keim commented.

“Where'd you find this?” I asked Neal.

“On the dining room table, when I went home to call the store after Triple-A gave my car a clean bill of health.”

“You see anybody hanging around the street or the building?”

He shook his head, then glanced at Ted, who stood a little apart from us. “You okay?” he asked stiffly.

“… Yeah.”

“We need to talk.”

“I know.”

I studied the salad, decided it wasn't worth sending to Richman Labs. Their tormentor struck me as equal to mine in leaving no clues to his identity.

Charlotte apparently had followed the same reasoning process. “You ever think there might be a connection between the guy who's after Neal and the woman who's after you?” she asked me.

“No—the M.O.’s too dissimilar. The two of them may be shirttail cousins in the craziness department, but nowadays that's a very big family.”

She nodded agreement and picked up the bowl. “I'll clean this for you, Neal.”

“Thanks.” Neal turned to Ted. “I guess Bud explained that the glazier couldn't come by till tomorrow to fix the door? I called him from the coast, asked him to remove the glass and board it up for the interim.”

“Bud?” Ted frowned.

“Bud Larsen.”

“Oh. I could've boarded it up and dealt with the glazier.”

“Yeah, but I'm the one who usually handles stuff like that, so I went ahead and made the calls.”

“Well, Bud hadn't boarded up the door by the time I came to work this morning. I haven't even seen him in more than two weeks.”

“How'd he get in, then?”

At first the men's conversation had simply served as a background to my thinking about the similarities between my position and theirs, but their final exchanges caught my attention.

I asked, “You're talking about the gardener at your building?”

“Not just the gardener,” Neal replied. “Bud's an all-around handyman. Works for two or three other buildings on the hill and runs a locksmith service on the side.”

“Was he the one who changed the locks when you moved in?”

“Uh-huh.”

Bud Larsen: he was smarter than I'd thought. I'd sat on that bench with him this morning and bought into the tales he told about the tenants we'd found suspect. George Chu had a superior attitude; Doug Kerr beat his wife; Al Mercado didn't like anybody. Implying possible prejudice, violence, and hatred. I wondered if any of it was true.

Bud Larsen …

Wednesday night

O
ur plans were made, and everybody was in place. Soon, maybe, we'd have evidence of yet another hate crime in our supposedly idyllic City-by-the-Bay.

I'd spent the late afternoon at the Plum Alley building, staging follow-up conversations with various tenants within the hearing of Bud Larsen, whom Mrs. Woods—at my request—had asked to touch up the paint on the courtyard walls. Larsen acted as if he wasn't listening, whistling as he worked with his brush, but his body language betrayed him in the same way a cat's does when it swivels its ears. When I announced to Karen Cooper that I couldn't wait to nail the bastard who was bothering my client, he flashed me a quick sidelong look that simmered with rage.

Larsen was the guilty party—now I was sure of that.

I also sensed he was ready to take the bait.

The sidewalk of Montgomery Street sloped steeply from where it intersected Plum Alley, ending in a series of concrete stairways that scaled the side of the hill in switchbacks above the northern waterfront. At one of the landings, the steps turned to the right and passed through an area of low, dense vegetation and cypress trees. It was very dark there, with only footlights to illuminate the cracked pavement, cold and quiet on this damp winter night. And uncomfortable, as Glenna Stanleigh and I were finding out while crouched on the bare ground behind a clump of junipers.

“Are you sure the video cam'll work when it's this dark?” I whispered.

“The tape's made for filming under these conditions.”

“But what if—”

“For heaven's sake, Sharon, relax! I've a lot of experience with night filming, you know. And spontaneous action like we're hoping for is my specialty.”

The wind rustled the branches overhead; from the street above I heard faint talk and laughter—late patrons leaving Julius’ Castle. Car doors slammed, engines started. Out beyond the Gate, a foghorn moaned. Close to midnight now—

My cell phone buzzed. I flipped it open, and Mick's low voice said, “Neal's leaving the building.”

“You spotted Larsen yet?”

“No.” Fifteen or twenty seconds went by. “There he is. Must've been lurking down by the retaining wall.”

“Thanks.” I ended the call. To Glenna I said, “They're on their way.”

She nodded, busy with her video equipment.

A minute more and the phone buzzed again. Keim said, “Neal just passed me. And Larsen's coming out of the alley.”

“Wait for Mick, then follow.” I closed the phone, tucked it into my purse, and took out my small flashlight. “Now,” I whispered to Glenna as I flashed the beam at the porch of the house across the steps, where Rae had gotten the residents’ permission to wait.

Glenna began filming.

Rubber soles slapped on the concrete and a stocky figure clad in jeans and a down jacket appeared. Neal. He skidded to a stop and peered into the shadows, as if to reassure himself that we were really there. I coughed softly. His posture relaxed some and he moved to the railing and stood as if taking in the misted lights below.

More footsteps, stealthy but unhurried. I tensed as Glenna swiveled the camera toward the stairway.

Bud Larsen turned the corner. For a moment he paused on the landing. Then he started down the next flight in a predator's walk: slow, calculating, fluid. He stopped no more than a yard away from Neal.

Neal turned his head, said in an uneven voice, “Bud. You startled me.”

“More like I scared you.” Larsen moved closer.

“Not really. I don't scare easily.”

“Come on, all you faggots do.”

“What did you call me?”

Larsen was silent. Beside me, Glenna fine-tuned her focus. Neal turned to face Larsen, his back against the railing.

“ ‘Faggot’—right?”

Larsen shrugged.

“You're the one who's been doing those things.”

“What things?”

“The notes, the phone calls. The Valentine's Day heart, the salad. You made a death threat on the phone.”

Larsen licked his lips, looked around. For a moment I was afraid he'd stonewall Neal, but his type never can resist boasting of their own cleverness.

“Okay, all right—I did those things. And you shoulda listened to what I told you on the phone. That bitch your boyfriend works for is asking questions. Says she's your friend. You know what a real man'd do if he had a friend like that nice piece of—”

“Shut up!” Neal's voice was controlled, quietly angry.

At any point now I could go down there and break up the confrontation; we had what we wanted—Larsen admitting on video what he'd done. But I was curious to see how this scene would play out.

Larsen laughed. “Oh, the faggot's gettin’ tough with me!” Sarcasm, but also a touch of surprise there.

“What I want to know, Bud, is what started this business? And where's it going to end?”

“I told you on the phone—somebody's gonna die. Guess who?”

“You don't mean that. Now,
what started it?”

“You oughta know.”

“But I don't.”

“Remember a month ago, in the elevator? When you made that pass at me?”

“I
what?”

“The day I fixed that leaky kitchen faucet for you. You were leaving, and we rode down in the elevator together.”

“Yes, I remember that, but—”

“You gotta remember what you did.”

“Honestly, I don't.”

“Oh, man, you must come on to a lotta guys! Too bad for you you picked the wrong one.”

“Bud, I'm asking—”

“Yeah, questions—like that McCone bitch. All right, you want me to say it, I'll say it. You punched me on the arm and called me Buddy.”

“… Is that
all?”

“Isn't it enough?”

“Bud, I do that with everybody—male or female, straight or gay. It's just a mannerism I use with people I like. I was thanking you for fixing the faucet.”

“Bullshit, man! You perverts're all alike.”

“All alike. In what way?”

Larsen hesitated. Looked away from Neal, alert, like an animal sniffing the air. “What is this?”

“What's what?”

“This whole month you never went for a walk alone before. Tonight you're standing here like you're waiting for me.”