There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (6 page)

“No trouble.” I gestured at the steel girders. “I take it this is going to be another complex like the one you built in Tiburon.”

He smiled in pleasure, laugh lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “You know Bay Shores, then?”

“I’ve seen it from a distance.”

“Well, Bay Shores East will be better. Five hundred units, two- and three-bedrooms. Pool, Jacuzzi, health spa, boat landing, full security, and—of course—the view of San Francisco across the Bay.” His voice was boyish and enthusiastic, lilting at the end of phrases.

I took a good look at Roy LaFond and decided the grocer Hung Tran had been right—this was not a man to lurk in basements or frighten children in stairwells. Still, this might be a man who would hire someone to lurk . . .

“. . . interested in buying one, I suppose?”

I turned my attention back to what LaFond was saying. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t suppose you would be interested in buying one of our units?”

He seemed to be making a joke, but I sensed seriousness beneath the words. Roy LaFond, from what I’d heard of him, had made a lot of money for someone who couldn’t be more than forty, and he’d probably done so by never letting an opportunity to make a deal pass him by.

I said, “Sorry, but I doubt I could afford one.” I didn’t add that I wouldn’t want one either. There had been a time when I’d thought I’d preferred sleek modern homes and furnishings. But the older I got, the more I leaned toward the traditional. My five-room cottage, built as emergency housing after the earthquake of 1906, suited me perfectly.

At that moment, a flatbed truck bearing a load of steel rumbled through the gate. LaFond put a hand on my arm and moved me out of its path, in spite of it being many yards away. Leaning down toward me, he said, “My secretary tells me you want to talk about the Globe Hotel. Are you a prospective buyer?”

I was about to explain my interest in the hotel when the driver of the truck jumped down from the cab and began hollering at a group of workers who were idling nearby. I glanced over there and said, “Could we find someplace quieter to talk?”

“Certainly. Let’s go down by the jetty.” Taking my arm again, as if he were afraid I might trip on uneven ground, LaFond led me across the site to the bay shore, where a wall of natural rock rose above the water. I smiled faintly, remembering his concern about his insurance rates. He didn’t let go of me until I was firmly ensconced on the jetty, then stepped back and stood before me, feet placed wide, arms folded across his chest.

“I take it the brokers sent you,” he said.

“No, I’m a private investigator.”

Concern flared in his eyes. “What’s wrong over there?”

“There have been problems—”

“Who hired you?”

“The tenants. They—”

“There’s plenty of heat and hot water. I’ve complied with every ordinance. And I haven’t tried to raise their rents.”

“I know that. But there have been—”

“They have nothing to complain about. I try to be a fair landlord.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Agitated, LaFond began to pace. “God knows I never wanted to own that fleabag. If it hadn’t been a contingency on the deal for this land, I wouldn’t have touched it. I don’t know a damned thing about being a landlord to a bunch of slum dwellers. And I can’t sell the dump; no one will even look at it, much less make an offer. And now, what is it? Have they gotten up a petition or what?”

“Mr. LaFond—”

“I can’t let them on that roof. They don’t understand the insurance—”

“Mr. LaFond!” I raised my voice, as Carolyn had earlier with Mary Zemanek. “No one wants anything from you.”

The words halted his pacing. “They don’t?”

“No. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll explain.”

He hesitated, then came over and leaned against the jetty next to me. “Explain, then.”

“There have been problems at the hotel. Someone seems to be trying to frighten your tenants.”

“Oh, that. Mary Zemanek mentioned something about it. But it was my impression that it was more hysteria than anything else.”

“Perhaps. But the Refugee Assistance Center—which settled many of the Asian tenants in the hotel—is concerned enough to want me to look into it.”

“They’re paying you?”

“Yes.”

“So none of this will come out of my pocket?”

“No.

“I see.” He paused, obviously pleased with that. “But why have you come to me?”

“I want to get your ideas on who might be causing these incidents.”

“
My
ideas. Why should I have any?”

“Well, it
is
your building.”

“I own it, yes. But I haven’t even set foot in it since last August. I have a manager to oversee it; don’t tell me Mary’s been falling down on the job.”

“I’m sure she’s doing the best she can. But these incidents apparently are quite frightening.”

“She didn’t describe them that way.”

“Probably she didn’t want to alarm you. But they recur . . . Today for instance, someone destroyed a Christmas tree that was in the lobby.”

An odd look passed over LaFond’s face, and then he frowned. “I can see how that could happen. That whole neighborhood’s frightening. If you ask me, it’s got to be some weirdo off the street who gets his kicks out of terrorizing people.”

“Did you ever consider that it might be someone with an ulterior motive?”

He squinted at me through the sunlight. “What kind of motive?”

I shrugged, letting it go temporarily. “Mr. LaFond, what do you intend to do with the hotel?”

“Sell it, if I can. It’s listed. But, as I said, there haven’t been any takers.”

“A sale would involve the buyer taking the tenants along with the building, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s the way the rent control ordinance reads.”

“And the new owner wouldn’t be able to raise the rents.”

“No. It’s a real drawback to a sale. Anyone financing that building today, given what interest rates are, would be taking on a heavy debt load. And, of course, there are repairs and maintenance. The building doesn’t pay for itself now, let alone with higher financing.” He pushed away from the wall and began to pace again. “I’d love to unload it, or turn it into something more profitable.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s nothing I
can
do, given the neighborhood. If it were a few blocks north, it would be a good possibility for one of those bed-and-breakfast places, or a chic, small hotel. You know the Abigail—near the main library?”

I nodded.

“Well, something like that. Spruce it up, furnish it with nice Victorian antiques, stick in a lounge, maybe a little restaurant. You’d have a real money-maker. I had a prospective buyer who was considering just that sort of thing—until he took a good look at the neighborhood.”

“So effectively you’re stuck with the Globe—and its tenants.”

“Yes.” He stopped pacing and turned to look at me, openly dismayed. “I guess I am.”

“Have you ever thought of getting the tenants out? It would make the property more saleable.”

“Of course I’ve thought of it. But there’s no legal way to do that.”

“But if they were frightened into leaving . . .”

His eyes narrowed. “What you’re saying is that I’m the one who is frightening them, to get them to vacate the premises.”

I just watched him, expecting an outburst of anger.

Roy LaFond surprised me. He ran a hand through his thick white hair, obviously at a loss for words. He surprised me so much, in fact, that I couldn’t think of anything to say either. I was fairly certain LaFond hadn’t gotten where he was by being a nice guy, and I’d taken his boyishness for an act, much like Otis Knox’s “aw, shucks, honey” performance. But LaFond actually seemed puzzled—then hurt.

We looked at each other for a minute, and then he said with wounded dignity. “I assure you, Ms. McCone, I do not sneak around that hotel growling at children in the stairwell. Nor do I create power failures, make noises in the basement, or destroy Christmas trees. I may not want that building or its tenants, but it’s in my best interests to make sure they are safe and secure.”

I had started to feel slightly ashamed, but when he said that about his best interests, the emotion evaporated. I said, “And you have no ideas about who might be responsible for these incidents?”

“No, none at all. And now I have to get back to my engineer.” He held out his arm, so he could guide me back to my car and thus avoid a potential lawsuit. When we got there, I thanked him for his time and told him I’d let him know what I found out. He merely nodded perfunctorily and walked away.

I thought about Roy LaFond and his odd reaction all the way to the city. And I particularly thought about his protestation of not growling at children in the stairwell or creating power failures; initially he’d hardly seemed aware of the incidents. It would be interesting to know how much Mary Zemanek had told him. And it would also be interesting to know where Roy LaFond had been about the time that Christmas had been dismembered.

CHAPTER SIX

By the time I got back to the city it was close to five o’clock; there would be just enough time to go to my office at All Souls Legal Cooperative in Bernal Heights and make a few phone calls before meeting Don at my house for dinner. Since I didn’t intend to be there long, I left my car in the driveway of the brown Victorian and hurried up the front steps.

Ted, the secretary, was typing industriously when I came through the door, and he nodded at me, barely taking his eyes of the handwritten notes he was transcribing. There was no sign of his usual
New York Times
crossword puzzle—or his friendly grin. A familiar flat feeling stole over me as I went down the hall and dumped my coat and bag in my office.

To banish the feeling, I continued along the narrow corridor to my boss, Hank Zahn’s office. But the door was shut and a Do Not Disturb sign—courtesy of the Doubletree Inn in Monterey—hung on the knob. I looked at it, debated knocking anyway, then went all the way to the rear of the house to the big country kitchen. No one was there, and none of the usual unwashed coffee cups and dishes cluttered the counters. The flat feeling was fast becoming a depression.

I went over to the refrigerator and looked in. A couple of bottles of Calistoga Water, some limp celery, condiments and a withered lime. No wine, no big pots of Hank’s famous beef stew, not even the alfalfa sprouts the co-op’s health food addicts favored. I shut the fridge door and leaned against it, sighing.

For several months now there had been a change in the atmosphere at All Souls. Once warm, friendly, and easygoing, it was cold and tense. People no longer took their meals here or organized impromptu parties; several of the attorneys had moved out of the living quarters on the second floor. There were conferences behind closed doors, and I was always running across people in furtive discussions in odd places like the service porch.

I had my suspicions about what was wrong and I would have liked to talk them over with someone. But Hank, my best friend there, seemed to be hiding from everyone—me included. My other good friend, Anne-Marie Altmann, the co-op’s tax attorney, was one of those who had moved out, so I saw less of here than before, and when I did we kept off the subject of work.

I started back to my office, considered giving Anne-Marie a call, but decided against it. She had been with All Souls since before I was hired and, as a full partner, was in a position to know what was going on. But she also kept very much to herself—it had taken me years to get to know her, and then only because we’d discovered a common passion for late-night horror movies. If Anne-Marie hadn’t seen fit to discuss the matter with me so far, she either didn’t know very much or didn’t want to talk about it. I’d just have to wait until Hank came out of his self-imposed isolation, or until there was some sort of formal explanation.

I went into my office and checked my in box for messages. There were two, one from the contractor who was remodeling my bathroom at my house, the other from Don. I tried my home number and got a busy signal; what was the workman doing on the phone when he was supposed to be hooking up the shower? Breaking the connection, I reached for my Rolodex and looked up the number for the police department’s Gang Task Force. I dialed, but my contact there, Inspector Richard Loo, was off duty. I left a message asking him to call me in the morning.

Next I called the
San Francisco Chronicle
and asked for a reporter I knew, J.D. Smith. J.D. was also gone for the day. I said to the man who answered, “Maybe you can help me. I’m trying to find out who wrote the interview you published a few months ago with Otis Knox.”

“I think that was Jeff Ellis.”

“Is he there?”

“Nope. He’s gone too.”

Another message for either J.D. or Jeff Ellis to call me when convenient.

Next I dialed Carolyn Bui.
She
was in her office. I gave her a brief rundown on what I’d been doing all day, and we agreed to meet at the Globe Hotel at ten-thirty.

Finally I called Don at KSUN. At least I could be assured of his being available; he was on the air until six. But as it was, he couldn’t take the call right away because he was reading a couple of commercials. I turned up the transistor radio I keep in the office and listened to him. According to Don’s enthusiastic voice, your life wouldn’t be complete until you’d checked out the new selection of records and tapes at the Record Factory. And all those kids out in San Ramon had better make it to the KSUN-sponsored Christmas extravaganza at the Civic Auditorium next Friday night. Don knew it would be terrific, because he’d be there personally to give our free KSUN T-shirts to the first fifty couples . . .

Then he made some strange honking noises, told a terrible joke, laughed uproariously, and put a record on.

“Hi, babe,” his voice said at the other end of the line.

I turned the radio off. “I swear sometimes I wonder what I’m doing with you.”

“Ah, you were listening to the show.”

“Briefly. I’m glad I know the real you.” The real Don was a quiet man, a classical pianist who hated the mediocre rock-and-roll that was the core of KSUN’s format.