Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (33 page)

Leora said, "How could that woman have married such scum? She must
be as bad as he is."

"She's pretty bad. But she claims she wasn't aware of his past until
Emmons showed up after killing Tracy and blurted out
about the newspaper article. I tend to believe her; it's turned out
that Soriano established an elaborate phony background for himself and
took measures to ensure he wouldn't have to appear at public functions
or get his picture in the papers."

"Still, she'd have to be pretty dumb or pretty evil not to go to the
cops once she knew. Didn't she realize he'd probably kill somebody
else? Or set another fire?"

"She says Rob promised her nothing like that would ever happen
again." I didn't know if she was telling the truth or not, but the
memory of her repetition of the words "he promised" during her
crippling hysterics at the scene of the fire made me lean toward
accepting what she claimed.

"Well, in my book she was stupid to believe the man. And him—for
somebody who's supposed to be such a smart high-roller, he's really
kind of stupid, too."

"I think what he is is shrewd, but with an overblown idea of his own
capabilities. His kind often conceive grandiose schemes, but then they
get tripped up by details. That's what happened in Florida. This time,
though, he won't be able to disappear and start over somewhere else."

Bobby bared his teeth in something that didn't even pretend to be a
smile. "Never thought I'd say it, but I'm glad they got the death
penalty in this state."

I remembered my primitive, near murderous rage as I'd stood over
Soriano on the derelict fishing boat, gun in hand. "I know what you
mean," I said.

Late that afternoon I stopped by All Souls to put my desk in order.
A bunch of people were sitting around the living room eating pizza:
Rae, Jack, Ted, Hank, Anne-Marie. Even the health nut was there; his
purge of the kitchen must be over, because he was sucking on a beer.
They all wore grubby work clothes and seemed in a festive mood.

Rae waved at me. "Come join our moving party!"

I went only as far as the archway. "Who moved?"

"Well, first Hank did. Then we picked up some furniture I bought at
Junk Emporium and dragged it up to my new room."

I looked at Hank in confusion. He was sitting on the couch with
Anne-Marie, his arm around her shoulders.

Anne-Marie said, "Don't panic; it's not a big deal. The Andersons
vacated our upstairs flat three weeks early. Hank and I talked it over
and decided we can't live together but don't want to live apart. So he
moved upstairs, I'm staying down. We're extending one another liberal
visiting privileges, of course."

"Of course." Although it sounded somewhat bizarre on the surface, it
struck me as a sensible arrangement.

"Why don't you have some pizza?" Ted said. "There's plenty—even
anchovy."

"Sorry—I have a dinner date, and I'm running behind schedule."

Rae smiled knowingly; she'd suspected all along that something was
developing between George and me. Jack looked glum and reached for
another slice of pizza. I grabbed a beer out of one of the six-packs on
the table and went up to my office.

When I arrived home, there was a note from the contractor taped to
my front door. He'd finished work on the new bedroom, it said, and had
locked up. He'd be by the next afternoon with the extra keys, to pick
up the final payment on our contract.

I hurried inside and inspected his work. It looked great. All I
needed to do now was paint, lay carpet, and install mini-blinds. Then,
I decided, I'd invite the All Souls's moving crew over to help me haul
my bedroom furniture back there. Afterward I'd feed them spaghetti, or
maybe lasagna.

But right now I needed to get ready for my date with George. I
wanted to look particularly good, because I felt apprehensive about it.
Too many things had been left unsaid between us over the last few days.
Tonight we would have to say them all.

It was a drizzly night in February, nearly two years to the day
since Tracy Kostakos died. South Park was shrouded in mist; it hazed
the street lamps and softened the ragged outlines of the burnt-out ruin
that once had been Café Comedie. A casual passerby, new to this place,
might not even notice it, much less guess at the tragedy that had been
played out here.

I'd come, as I often did these days, to walk in the park. The ground
still bore scars where the ambulances had driven, but frequent rains
had begun to heal them, bringing fresh blades of grass. Soon other
reminders would go; eventually there would be none at all.

I walked with my head bent forward, hands thrust in my pockets,
barely noticing the damp. The park was familiar territory now; I came
here so often that the old black men who congregated on the benches on
nice days were starting to think of me as a regular. One of them had
waved to me the other afternoon.

If anyone had asked me why I kept returning to this place, I would
have been hard pressed to give an answer. It had something to do with
trying to make sense of it all, but I didn't
expect anyone else to understand that—because I didn't really
understand it myself.

Trying to make sense of Tracy Kostakos, whose greed for everything
the world has to offer had destroyed both her talent and her life.

Trying to make sense of Marc Emmons, who had allowed himself to be
used until love turned to hatred, hatred to violence.

Trying to make sense of the evil at the core of Rob Soriano, and the
primitive rage it had triggered in me.

There was senselessness, too, in the fact that Bobby Foster,
although innocent, was still incarcerated, due to the ponderously slow
machinations of our criminal justice system.

Senselessness in the fact that George wasn't with me.

That Saturday night he'd sat across from me in a North Beach
restaurant, candlelight showing new lines of pain etched into his
rough-hewn face. Held my hand as he told me he was moving back to the
Palo Alto house, to be near Laura while she remained in the psychiatric
clinic and, later, to support her when she was discharged as an
outpatient.

"It won't be forever," he'd said, "but it's something I have to do.
I owe it to her. To myself. In a way, to you."

I shook my head, unable to comprehend.

"I know I can't ask you to wait for me," he added. "I don't see why
you would. But when it's all over, when she's on her feet again, I'll
come to you, see if you'll still have me."

"We could just—"

"I know what you're going to say. I can't do that to either of us.
You shouldn't have to share a burden that's really mine alone; I
couldn't stand to always be leaving you with the knowledge that I'd be
going home to another woman."

"So what…?"

"When I've worked this out, we'll see if you want to start again. I
know I will."

He was an honorable man, George Kostakos. But sometimes on cold,
lonely nights, I cursed him for that honor. And when I was feeling
particularly low, I wondered if his scruples would have remained intact
had I not been the one who exposed the sad truth about his daughter's
life and death.

The drizzle was turning to real rain now. I ignored it, turned up my
collar, kept walking. South Park was silent, deserted. A pall had
settled over it these days, thick as the pall of the smoke from the
fire. I wondered if it would ever come alive again. If I would.

A car turned in from Third Street. Its headlights blinded me. I
shielded my eyes, waiting for it to pass.

It pulled to the curb a couple of yards away from me. A voice said,
"Hey, lady, want a ride?"

Rae, in her old Rambler American.

I went over and leaned down, looking through the window at her.
"What are you doing here?"

"Detective work. I followed you. I've followed you here several
times now. Don't you think you ought to give it up?"

"Give what up?"

She gestured out the window at the park. "All of this. The past. Get
on with your life."

Normally I would have been furious at such interference. But
suddenly I knew that this was the one person who did understand. At
least as much as I did.

"What we're going to do," she went on, "is go get some Thai food. I
found a great new restaurant. Cheap, too."

"Rae—"

"Then there's this little club, way out by the beach. Jazz. I'm
friends with the drummer. The piano player's interesting; you'll like
him."

"Rae, no fix-ups."

"It's not a fix-up. We'll just stop in, have a few drinks. I usually
get them on the house. If we stay till closing, they'll take
us out for burgers—Clown Alley's open twenty-four hours—and Jim—that's
the piano player—knows of this ferry service that runs bay cruises all
night long, even in the rain."

I started to say no. Hesitated. Looked back over my shoulder at the
park, cold and sodden in the darkness. Straightened and looked over the
roof of the car at the deeply shadowed ruins of Café Comedie.

"Why the hell not?" I said.

Rae was right: it was time to get on with it.

San Quentin Prison stands on a windswept headland on San Francisco
Bay. At first sight it does not look like such a bad place: its
sandstone-colored walls and red roof are architecturally imposing. The
cypress-fringed hill that abuts them and the row of sturdy palms along
the shoreline lend the natural setting a certain charm. The waters of
the bay are azure or green or steel gray, depending on the weather,
dotted with sailboats and the sleek ferries that ply their way from
Marin County's Larkspur Landing to San Francisco. Not such a bad place
at all.

But as you approach the prison's iron gates down a narrow lane lined
mostly with ramshackle houses, you hear the rumble of loudspeakers in
the yard and the monotonous hum of the generators that keep the huge
physical plant functioning. You see the guard tower and floodlights and
warning signs, and the weary hopelessness in the eyes of the people who
trickle through the visitors' entrance. The wind feels colder; it
carries the stench of stagnant water and an indefinable decay.

Then you notice that elsewhere on the promontory no healthy
vegetation grows, as if even trees and shrubs are wary of venturing too
near the grim edifice. You realize how far removed Point San Quentin is
from the posh newness of Larkspur Landing, the million-dollar homes of
nearby Tiburon and Belvedere, the majesty of the redwoods and Mount
Tamalpais. In spirit, this place shares more with Richmond, the city
that lies across a graceless span of bridge to the northeast—a troubled
community blighted by slums, populated largely by struggling blacks
from whose ranks many of those housed behind the prison walls have come.

And on a darkly overcast winter morning, such as the one in late
December when I first visited there, you are almost certain to remind
yourself that this is a place of misery, where human beings are often
sent to die.

I'd left the city early that Thursday morning, hoping to be at the
prison at eight-thirty, but traffic was slowed by an accident in one of
the northbound lanes on the Golden Gate Bridge, and it was nine-fifteen
when I presented my identification and signed the east gate log. I
passed through the metal detector at the security checkpoint, where an
officer inspected the contents of my briefcase and shoulder bag. Then I
sat down as directed on a bench in the visiting area.

It was early enough that there were few people in the area; most of
them I judged to be either attorneys or investigators like myself,
there to confer with inmates in private. I waited for close to an hour
before approval came down, even though my name had supposedly been
added to the list of visitors authorized by the prisoner's attorney.
The desk officer entered my tape recorder in his log of recording and
photographic equipment, and then I was led to one of the segregated
visiting rooms for inmates of the adjustment center and death row.

After the guard locked me in, I looked around the room for a moment.
It was institutional tan, divided down the center by a
wall-to-wall table. A heavy grille extended from the table to the
ceiling. Had I possessed tendencies to claustrophobia, my surroundings
would probably have prompted me to pound on the door and demand to be
let out. As it was, I felt curiously suspended, as if time had stopped
and wasn't going to start up again until some distant and unknown power
said it could. Finally I crossed to the table, set my briefcase on it,
and sat in one of three wooden chairs.

It was another ten minutes before the door on the other side of the
grille opened and a young black man in blue prison work clothes was
admitted. He was slender, of medium height, with a complexion the shade
of cinnamon. In spite of his age, which I knew to be twenty, his
hairline was receding; the short black curls formed an M on his high
forehead. Beneath it, his eyes were heavy lidded and unreadable, his
nose long and broad, his mouth set tight. When the door locked behind
him, he glanced back at it and balled his fists reflexively.

I'd viewed a videotape of his confession the night before, but in
person he looked different. Smaller and more vulnerable. And somehow
incapable of perpetrating the vicious crime he'd admitted to on the
tape.

As I studied him, I thought—not for the first time—that it was
possible he'd been railroaded by a criminal justice system that is not
exactly blind when a poorly educated young black with a juvenile record
is brought to trial on sensational charges. A victim of that system, or
a coldblooded killer? For the moment I preferred to reserve judgment.

"Mr. Foster," I said, "I'm Sharon McCone from All Souls Legal
Cooperative. Jack Stuart told you I'd be visiting."