Muller, Marcia - [10] The Shape of Dread (v1.0) (html) (9 page)

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."

"The other guy mentioned a couple of attendants who are off. Did
either of them know Kostakos or Foster?"

"Nah, they only been here a couple of months. None of us're real
steady workers."

"Does anybody at the club ever talk about the murder?"

"Sometimes. In whispers."

"What do they say?"

"That Foster was railroaded. But face it, nobody wants to think
somebody he knows can do a thing like that."

The redhead returned, jogging. Another car approached; the man I'd
been talking with went to the curb. I thanked them both for their time
and started down the sidewalk.

The drizzle had become a full-blown rain by now. Most of South
Park's buildings were dark; here and there light showed behind closed
blinds or around yellowed shades. Along with the rain, the wind kicked
up again; it rattled the bare branches of the sycamore trees ringing
the park; their leaves lay sodden on
the ground.

I glanced at my watch and shivered. Ten-thirty on a rainy Thursday
night in winter. A little less than two years before, Tracy Kostakos
had gone to her unknown fate at just about this time on just such a
night. Had she walked this way, feeling the drops on her head and
wishing for a hat, as I was? Or had she ignored them, moving
purposefully—and if so, to what end? And had Bobby Foster walked beside
her, or was he telling the truth—that they'd argued and parted?

Not for the first time I was afraid I'd prove unequal to feeling my
way through the dark maze that lay between the present and that
long-ago night. But the desire to shed light on its events had taken
firm root within me. It wasn't even desire, but raw necessity—for the
sake of the man whose life I held in my hands.

George Kostakos said, "Do you realize what it will do to people,
your resurrecting this tragedy?"

"I'm afraid I can't get beyond the fact that it may save a young
man's life."

He lowered his handsome, rough-hewn face into his palms, ran long
fingers through thick black hair that was frosted with gray. "Christ, I
know it's unconscionable to put my own feelings first, while that kid's
sitting up there waiting to die. But we've all been through such agony,
dammit. I don't want the people I care about to suffer that again. And
I certainly don't want to relive it myself."

I remained silent, giving him time to get his emotions under
control. It was eleven o'clock Friday morning. We were seated in the
living room of his borrowed house in the Marina district, directly
across the street from the Palace of Fine Arts. Through the front
window I could see the icy-gray lagoon bordered by wind-warped cypress
trees; beyond it the tan colonnade and domed rotunda—relics of the 1915
exposition celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal—were shrouded in
mist. Kostakos had explained that a friend who was
temporarily living in Europe had offered him the use of the house when
he'd separated from his wife the previous summer. Even if he hadn't
told me that, I would have guessed it wasn't his, because nothing about
it went with the man seated across from me.

The house actually had a schizoid quality. The exterior was
Mediterranean, as many of the buildings in that quiet, affluent area of
the city are: white stucco, with black ornamental grillwork and
decorative yew trees; possessed of the obligatory postage-stamp front
lawn; two storied, with a garage below the living room window and a
door enclosed in a Moorish arch. From the outside it seemed an
ordinary-enough house for the Marina, although its location would make
it more expensive than most.

Inside was another story. The owner had taken it upon himself to
create a designer's showcase dream that would be a nightmare to anyone
desirous of living comfortably. The walls of the first-floor entry were
starkly white; it contained nothing whatsoever except a polished black
rock on a pedestal. The uncarpeted stairs rose to a living room off a
gallery—also white, with bare, bleached wood floors. Two pairs of
spartan chrome-and-leather chairs faced each other at right angles to
the fireplace; they struck me as the modern-day equivalent of those
prissy antiques that are guaranteed to be unsittable and will probably
fall apart if you try. A second grouping of chairs and tables at the
far end of the room looked similarly inhospitable, and the only sign of
human habitation was a book- and paper-heaped desk in front of the
window. I assumed that was Kostakos's import.

The chairs had proved as unsittable as they looked, at least for any
length of time. I shifted on mine now, waiting for Kostakos to speak.

Finally he raised his head and looked me in the eye. His were
gold-flecked hazel, the kind that can surprise you by sometimes
appearing either green or blue. He said, "I'm not going to
try to obstruct your investigation, but I don't care to help you,
either."

I hesitated, framing my reply carefully. "I'm not asking you to
help, not in any material way. The reason I wanted to talk with you is
that I'm trying to form some kind of impression of your daughter. I've
heard various things about her—from her mother, her roommate, her
employer—and it will round out the picture to hear what you have to
say."

He regarded me intently for a moment, then got up and moved
restively around the barren room. He was tall and lean, and his
body—clad in a blue chambray workshirt and jeans—seemed to hum with a
pent-up energy. This man, I sensed, would do nothing halfway. Whatever
he turned his hand to would receive his total concentration and
effort—be it teaching, writing, research, or things personal.

Face it, McCone, my often annoying inner voice said as I watched him
pace, your prim-and-proper "things personal" is a euphemism for sex.

Not totally, I countered. But if so, what of it? I'm not allowed to
think about sex? I certainly ought to be, after all these months
without it.

But the thought was unsettling nonetheless, and when Kostakos sat
back down, I had difficulty meeting his eyes. He said, "You've talked
with Laura?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"How is she?"

"Lonely."

His eyes became shadowed, their color edging toward the green; the
fine lines around them grew tight, as if he were in pain. After a pause
he said, "I'm sorry about that. I've told her she ought to get out, go
back to the university, start seeing her therapist again—anything but
sit there in that house or that wretched apartment."

"You know about her weekly visits there?"

"I know." His lips pursed; the knowledge had left a bitter taste.

"Amy Barbour knows, too," I said. "She's afraid Laura might be
self-destructive or dangerous to her."

"Amy Barbour is a twit. Laura's incapable of harming herself or
anyone else. She's much too selfish for that."

The harsh judgment shocked me. It showed on my face, because
Kostakos immediately added, "Selfishness isn't really a negative trait,
you know."

"If you say so—you're the psychologist."

"There's a difference between selfishness and self-centeredness," he
said. "Self-centered people are narcissists, engrossed in only what
concerns them. Selfish people, on the other hand, tend to put their own
welfare first, but they realize they're not the center of the universe.
They're often able to do extremely well by others, because they take
care of themselves and can be quite effective in their endeavors. When
I say Laura is selfish, I mean she looks out for herself. It's her way
of getting through."

"She doesn't seem to be doing too good a job of it recently, though."

"No." He hesitated, eyes clouded again. "But there's nothing I can
do about that."

"You mentioned her way of getting through. What's yours?" It was a
very personal question, but Kostakos seemed candid enough to answer it,
and I wanted to keep him talking.

He motioned at the desk in the front window. "My work. It takes me
outside myself."

"Laura said you've both taken leaves of absence from Stanford. Are
you teaching somewhere else?"

"Something like that. I'm involved with a group called Living
Victims. Have you heard of it?"

"No."

"It's a support group for friends and relatives of murder victims.
Sort of like Parents of Murdered Children, except it's not
limited to blood relatives. They helped me a lot when I first moved to
the city, and now I'm trying to return some of that by assisting them
with grant writing. And I'm also working on a book that I'd started…
before."

"What's the book about?"

"It outlines a psychological model—" He broke off. "You don't really
want to hear about it."

"Actually, I do. I was a soc major at Berkeley, and I took a good
bit of psych, too."

Kostakos looked pleased. I assumed he spent a good deal of time
alone, and although his involvement with Living Victims would bring him
into contact with a fair number of people, most of them would have
little interest in his psychological theories.