There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (7 page)

“Me, too. Are we on for dinner?”

“Yes, but I’ll have to pick something up.” We discussed what we wanted to have, settled on my special burgers with lots of cheese, and said we’d meet at my house after six. Whoever arrived first would open the wine. After I hung up, I tried to call my contractor again, but the line was still busy.

That bothered me a little. The contractor was a diminutive Australian name Barry who claimed to be very good with plumbing. As far as I was concerned, his primary virtue was that he worked cheap. Up to now he had spent a great deal of time puttering around the bathroom mumbling strange things that I took to be the way they expressed frustration in Australia. It had taken a week for Barry to install the toilet—which had previously been located in an icy cubicle on the back porch—and the principles of hot and cold water pipes still eluded him. As a result, I’d been taking my showers either at the converted warehouse loft where Don lived or at the next-door neighbors’.

Well, I decided. I’d know what the trouble was soon enough. No use rushing home before I did the grocery shopping.

When I left the office I noticed Ted was gone, his typewriter neatly covered. The hallway was dark, the Do Not Disturb sing still hung on Hank’s door, and no convivial noises or cooking smells emanated from the kitchen. In the old days, Ted would still have been there, gabbing with the attorneys as they emerged from their offices or returned from a day in court. Hank would have been throwing together one of his wonderful concoctions for dinner and taking a lot of ribbing about incipient indigestion. I probably would have been persuaded to stay around for a glass of wine—or two or three. But now all was hushed and gloomy. I wondered if anyone would even think to put up the traditional Christmas tree in the front window this year.

Brooding over this state of affairs, I went out and found a note on my car’s windshield. It read: “Sharon—Please do not park in the driveway. It is for the convenience of the attorneys only.” And it was signed by Gilbert Thayer, a University of Michigan graduate who had joined the co-op last year—and whom I considered to be a large part of the current problem. I crumpled the note and dropped it on the ground where I hoped he would find it, then drove to the nearby Safeway on Mission Street. After ten minutes of picking out my groceries and thirty-five standing in line, I was on my way home to check on my contractor’s latest disaster.

Home was a brown-shingled cottage on Church Street, beyond where the J-line streetcar tracks stop. It was a quiet neighborhood, peopled mainly with blue-collar workers and a sprinkling of young professionals who had bought run-down houses and were fixing them up. In the ten months I’d lived there, I’d found that casual conversations over the back fence could be highly instructive; I had learned of a good place to buy linoleum from the Halls, who lived on the left side, and had been referred to Barry by the Curleys on the right. The Curleys were the ones who now let me use their shower—no doubt out of a sense of guilt.

Both sides of the narrow street were lined with cards, parked bumper to bumper, and Don’s antique gold Jaguar was in my driveway. I pulled in parallel, blocking him, and looked around for Barry’s truck. It wasn’t in sight—a sign I wasn’t sure how to interpret. I grabbed the grocery bag, hurried up the front steps, and stood on the porch, fumbling with my keys. Once inside, I tripped over my cat, Watney, who ran to greet me; I went back toward the kitchen, scolding him. Don was at the table, drinking red wine and reading the evening paper.

Don is big man, stocky, with a graceful bearing that one normally doesn’t expect in someone his size. When I came in he stood up, his mouth curving beneath his shaggy black mustache, and planted a kiss on my cheek. I put the grocery bag down on the counter and said, “Okay, where is he?”

“What a greeting.” Don went back to the table and poured me a glass of wine.

Warily I took it from his outstretched hand. “If you’re giving me this before I’ve taken off my coat, it means trouble. Barry tried to reach me at work, but when I called back the line was busy. I take it you saw him.”

“Yes. He’ll be back.”

I glanced suspiciously at the hallway between the kitchen and the back porch. The bathroom opened off it, and I could see a shaft of light shining through the door. “Back from where?”

“Why don’t you sit down and relax.”

“Uh-oh.” But I took off my coat and sat, propping my feet on one of the other chairs. “All right, where did he go?”

Don was beginning to smile again. “To borrow some surgical tools.”

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but that definitely wasn’t it. “What on earth does he need surgical tools for?”

“Well, as he explained it, he spilled a box of nails, and the bloody things ran down the bloody shower drain like a wombat into a burrow.”

I smiled faintly. “So there are nails down the shower drain. That still doesn’t explain the need for surgical tools.”

“Barry can’t reach the nails with any of his own implements, and they’re blocking the drain. So he spent the afternoon calling around and finally located an intern friend who would loan him—”

“Oh, Lord! He’s going to fish the nails out of the drain with the instruments this doctor
operates
with?”

“Well, I gather he’s only an intern. They probably haven’t seen much service.”

“Oh, Lord! Remind me to get his name and never to go to him if I have to be under the knife.”

Don and I looked at each other, and then we both started to laugh. It quickly turned into one of our shared fits, where we got started and couldn’t stop until we were red-faced, teary-eyed, and weak around our midsections. As luck would have it, Barry chose to enter in the middle of it, carrying a black medical bag. We looked at the bag, exchanged glances, and lost control all over again. Barry gave us a baleful look and continued on to the bathroom. In a bit we heard delicate rattling noises as he plumbed the pipes with forceps.

I put my finger to my lips and said, “Sssh! We’ve hurt his feelings.”

Don rolled his eyes, clasped his hand over his mouth, and tried unsuccessfully to muffle his laughter. It was several minutes before I was calm enough to get up and start making the burgers. Contritely, I made two extra, in case Barry was hungry, and cut generous slices of cheese to go on top.

CHAPTER SEVEN

By ten-thirty the Tenderloin had donned a tattered neon disguise. The lights of the bars and porno theatres and cheap hotels bathed the area in red and gold, pink and green, masking the worst of its squalor. But underneath the garish trappings, one could easily see the refuse and decay, and the alleys where danger waited.

I parked my car in a guarded lot Carolyn had recommended and walked toward the Globe Hotel, my senses warily alert to the activity that ebbed and flowed around me. Hard-faced women—some dressed in gaudy finery, others in rags—went about their business or stood on corners waiting for it to materialize. Shabby men, their collars turned up against the biting cold, hustled along the pavement or leaned against buildings, panhandling. Winos clutched their paper-encased bottles as if they were their last fading hopes. From the bars came blaring music and drunken laughter; from the restaurants came the odor of grease, faintly underscored by the street smells of garbage and urine.

The door of the Globe was unlocked. I hurried inside, grateful for the first rush of warm air, then stopped in surprise. On the counter where Sallie Hyde’s fake Christmas tree had stood was a small Scotch pine in a red-and-green pot. It was covered with handcrafted ornaments of the kind found in specialty stores, and an ornate gold star crowned its tip. A heavy metal chain wound around the pot. I crossed the lobby and followed the chain down behind the reception desk to where it was padlocked to one of the upright supports. Someone was taking no chances.

And rightly so: live Christmas trees did not come cheap. I knew that from pricing them. Nor did the kind of ornaments this one was festooned with. Who, I wondered, had dispensed such largesse?

I went over to the door of Mary Zemanek’s apartment and knocked, but received no answer. The rest of the hotel was similarly quiet, although I could hear a radio playing and a baby crying in the apartments beyond the ground-floor fire door. It was after ten-thirty, and Carolyn hadn’t arrived yet, but she’d said she might be late when I’d talked to her earlier. In her absence, I decided to reinvestigate the basement; I hadn’t given it a thorough going-over that morning, and it had occurred to me that I might have missed a hiding place.

I was carrying a paper sack containing the olive-green sheet I’d found down there that morning, and for a moment I debated leaving it behind the reception desk. Then I decided to keep it with me and tucked it securely under my arm as I went through the fire door. As I passed down the corridor, the baby’s crying became louder. A woman’s harsh voice was raised in what I was coming to recognize as the nasal syllables of Vietnamese, and then the kind of frantic music that usually accompanies TV car chases flared up. The child either stopped crying or else its wails were drowned out by the television. I shrugged, thinking that every parent has his own way of dealing with these things.

Inside the stairwell, the single bulb glowed dully, the green walls reflecting it murkily. I flicked the switch by the door and saw a shaft of light shine on the stairs that led to the basement. Standing still, I listened to the roar of the furnace below. The sheet of paper that Mrs. Vang had given me listing the frightening incidents hadn’t shown times for them, just dates. But now I realized the noises in the basement would have to have been confined to those hours when the furnace wasn’t in operation: otherwise, the residents couldn’t possibly have heard them.

That was good, because it probably meant whoever was causing the trouble had entered the building during the daylight hours, when someone was likely to have seen him. Probably, I’d have to check the times the noises had occurred—if anyone remembered—and also the schedule for running the furnace.

I started down the stairway, my hand on the metal railing. Halfway to the landing, I heard a click, and then the furnace quit. Apparently it was on a thermostat and switched off when the area around it reached optimal temperature, whatever that was. And, unfortunately, that fact negated my new theory. Still, it would be a good idea to try to pinpoint the times of the various incidents and then canvass the neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen a stranger entering the hotel.

Now there was another faulty theory, I thought, as I rounded the corner on the landing. Why was I so sure the culprit was a stranger? Perhaps it was someone who lived right here in the hotel. The residents seemed a friendly, cohesive bunch, but so had All Souls once. The trouble at the Globe could very well be internal.

The basement was quiet, now, except for little pinging noises form the hot metal of the furnace. It hulked in the shadows ahead of me, the orange flicker of its pilot light visible through the grille near the floor. The flame drew my eyes downward and I saw a path of liquid that had trickled along the slightly sloping ground toward the outside wall. It hadn’t been there in the morning . . .

And then I stopped, senses sharpening as they had earlier on the street. The liquid was thick and dark, and it came from the left where the bovine boiler stood on its absurd spindly legs. Under its bulging white belly was another pair of legs—blue-jeaned, bent at the knees, feet encased in tennis shoes.

It was a man who lay there, at the beginning of that dark liquid trail.

I sucked in my breath and hurried over to him. He lay crumpled on his side, arm outflung around his head. One cheek was pressed flat on the floor, and a widening spill of blood spread around it. He was an Oriental, about Duc Vang’s age or younger.

Quickly I knelt beside him and felt his neck. His flesh was warm and pliant, but I couldn’t detect any pulse from the big artery. I moved my fingers around, thinking the pulse was so faint I might have missed it. Nothing. Leaning forward, I looked at the top of his head. It was caved in, with white splinters of bone showing through the scalp.

I drew back, balancing on my heels and then tipping into a sitting position. My breath came in short, shallow gasps. This had happened before, in the presence of other dead bodies, in other places. The hyperventilation brought dizziness, and I forced my head forward, slowing my breathing with a concentrated effort. This happened more and more, whenever I saw a human life tossed aside like so much garbage . . .

In a moment I straightened up. I felt very cold, and the smell of death, pungent and foully sweet, was all around me. Strange I had not noticed it before.

But then, the smell wasn’t very strong, really. And I hadn’t been expecting it. Instead I’d been looking for . . . what? Oh, yes. A hiding place.

I scanned the room around me. No one was behind the furnace or lurking at one end of the storage lockers. I searched the concrete floor, looking for a weapon. There was nothing—no wrench, no pipe, no piece of wood—that could’ve done the damage to this man’s head.

The furnace kicked on with a loud rumble. I jerked my head toward it, then got to my feet, stumbling over the paper sack I’d been carrying. Snatching it up, I went to the stairs and glanced back at the dead man. Nothing to do for him now. Nothing but call the police.

My limbs felt cold and heavy as I climbed the stairs and went into the hall. Should I knock on one of these doors? I wondered. No, mustn’t alarm the residents. The lobby—there’s a pay phone.

I ran down the hall and into the lobby. Carolyn Bui stood by the desk, looking up at the Christmas tree. She turned as I came in, and her hand flew to her mouth when she saw my face.

“Sharon,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

I shook my head and glanced over at the pay phone in the corner. It seemed impossible to locate a coin in my bag, much less remember the number for Homicide.

“Sharon—”

“Give me a couple of dimes.”

“But what—”

“Some dimes! Please.”