There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (8 page)

Carolyn reached into her purse and extracted the coins. I took them in icy fingers and went to the phone. She followed, pressing closer to me than I would have liked. I could feel her body stiffen as I gave the facts to the Homicide inspector who caught my call.

When I hung up, I turned to face Carolyn. Her eyes glittered, unnaturally large in the dim light. “When did this happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Not long ago. He’s still warm.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know that either. A male Oriental, about Duc Vang’s age. I’ve never see him before.

She started for the fire door, but I caught her arm. “Don’t go down there, Carolyn. Wait for the police.”

“But I have to see how—”

“No, you don’t. You don’t want to.”

She regarded me for a few seconds, then nodded and came back toward the desk with me. I let go of her arm and set the paper sack—which was beginning to annoy me—next to the tree. Then I leaned back against the ledge to wait. The ends of my hair caught on one of the tree’s branches, but I didn’t bother to free them. A numbness was spreading through me, a counter-reaction to that last spurt of adrenaline that had enabled me to make my call.

“We should tell Mrs. Zemanek,” Carolyn said after a minute.

“She’s not here.”

“She’s always here.”

“Not tonight. Not when I knocked earlier.”

“Probably she was watching TV with her headphones on. She does that sometimes.” Carolyn started over there.

Once more I stopped her. “Don’t. She’ll raise a commotion. They’ll be enough confusion later. Wait for the police.”

As soon as I’d spoken, two uniformed officers stepped through the street door. They asked who had called. I said I had and showed them where to go. They went down into the basement, came back. One hurried outside. The other came over to Carolyn and me. There were questions to be answered, names and addresses to be given. I felt better, having something to do.

Then they left us along, huddled against the desk near the Christmas tree. Carolyn said, “The Vangs will be back from their restaurant soon.”

“Yes.”

“Who do you suppose that is in the basement?”

“I don’t know.”

“I should ask to see him. Maybe I can identify him.”

I said nothing, tired and steeling myself for what lay ahead.

The uniformed officers returned, followed by another patrolman. Two of them went through the fire door and began knocking on the doors of the apartments off the hall. The other stood watching Carolyn and me. Soon the lab technicians would arrive, and the coroner’s men . . .

I looked up at the door and then stood up straighter, staring at the tall blond plainclothesman who had just entered. It was my old boyfriend, Lieutenant Gregory Marcus. And for the first time in more than a year and half since we’d broken up, I was glad to see him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was after one in the morning when I let myself into the warehouse off Third Street where Don had his loft. I hurried down the echoing corridor, past a dance studio and a metal sculpture shop, and used a key in a door that was decorated with a single gold star—Don’s concession to the Christmas season. The cavernous room beyond was dark, and I flicked on overhead spotlights that illuminate a baby grand piano, a set of drums, and three walls of stereo equipment, books, and records.

Don wasn’t there, but I hadn’t expected him to be. He was taping one of his celebrity talk shows tonight, with a band that was in town for a holiday show at the Cow Palace. Musicians being the nocturnal creatures they are, the taping had been arranged for ten o’clock, and afterwards they would all go out someplace for drinks and creative lie-telling. I didn’t expect Don until after the bars closed at two—if then.

But I hadn’t wanted to go home, not after what had happened at the Globe Hotel. And I knew Don would arrive eventually. Right now it was enough just being there among his treasured possessions. Don is a person who leaves a great deal of himself in any place he inhabits, and I could almost feel his comforting presence. I dropped my coat on a pile of pillows on his big blue rug, then went over to the piano, running my fingers over the keys and striking middle C. The note echoed forlornly in the high-ceilinged space—forlorn, like I felt.

The murder victim in the basement of the hotel had turned out to be Hoa Dinh, aged sixteen, eldest son of a family on the sixth floor and Duc Vang’s best friend. Hoa, Carolyn had told me, had been only ten when his family had fled Vietnam in a cargo boat with forty other people. The boat had nearly sunk and, after losing engine power, had drifted for a week on the South China Sea before help came. Hoa had then come to America by a circuitous route; had suffered fear and deprivation and uncertainty; had been shunted between two resettlement camps, where he could neither speak the language nor eat the strange, unpalatable food. In San Francisco, he had been moved in and out of three apartments, endured the rigors of English-as-a-second-language classes, and finally begun an electronics course that promised him something of a brighter future.

He had been through all that, and then at age sixteen he’d ended up bludgeoned to death in the basement of a Tenderloin hotel.

I left the piano and climbed to the large loft on the left-hand side, where the kitchen and eating area were. On the opposite side of the space was a smaller loft where Don slept under one of the skylights. He’d found the place in October after he’d been evicted from his apartment because his piano playing disturbed the neighbors, and it was the ideal situation for him. All the spaces in the converted warehouse were soundproofed, and even if they hadn’t been, Don’s music would not have bothered the other tenants, who came and went at odd hours, some living in the building, others merely practicing various artistic pursuits there.

After getting myself some white wine from the refrigerator, I sat down at the oak dining table. I wanted to clear the events at the Globe Hotel from my mind; I would have liked to have drunk enough to banish the images implanted there. But that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, there wasn’t enough wine to get really drunk; and even if there had been, no amount of alcohol was going to help me. I’d never been able to turn off my mind—either at will or with booze or tranquilizing drugs—and I knew I was in for a bad time.

When Greg Marcus had spotted me in the lobby of the hotel over two hours earlier, he’d raised one dark-blond eyebrow and said sardonically, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

I’d smiled faintly and stood up even straighter, wanting to present a controlled, professional appearance. It seemed to me that I should be getting better at handling these things, what with all the years and all the violence. But I wasn’t. I still felt sickened and I still hyperventilated, and it made me ashamed, especially when I reacted that way in front of a pro like Greg.

As he watched my face, his eyes flickered with concern and he said, “Are you all right?”
It—as well as his earlier wisecrack—was a throwback to the time we were still together, and it gave me a displaced feeling.

“I’m fine,” I said.

He nodded. Subject dismissed. “Tell me what happened.” Now his tone was carefully neutral, his face expressionless. With a flash of relief, I realized he intended to treat me as if I were a stranger who had phoned in, and I was glad he’d adopted that attitude. It would make our dealings much easier.

I introduced him to Carolyn and explained why she had hired me. I went over my arrival at the hotel and what I had encountered. In the middle of this, the Vangs returned and added to the confusion. Mary Zemanek emerged from her apartment to see what the commotion was and immediately began invoking the owner’s displeasure. Mr. Dinh, Hoa’s father, identified his son’s body, his pregnant wife standing by in stoical sorrow. She had, Carolyn said, lost two children on the flight from their homeland; while not inured to such loss, she could handle it better than most.

Finally the questioning was over. The lab men departed, and the coroner’s personnel left with the body bag. Carolyn went upstairs with the Dinhs, saying we would reschedule our meeting with the Vangs tomorrow. Greg looked at me and said, “Shall I walk you to your car?

“You don’t have to—”

“That’s okay.” He paused. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes. I wanted to ask you, though—can I remain on the case?”

Faint amusement flickered in his eyes. “Would it make any difference if I told you not to?”

“Yes, it probably would.”

“It hasn’t in the past.”

I didn’t want to dig up that particular bone of contention. “Look,” I said, “that was a long time ago. I’m older now; people change with the years.”

“Don’t we.” For a moment his eyes were far away. Then he said, “Sure, stay with it. I know you’ll keep me posted on any important developments. And feel free to call me, if you need information.”

“Thanks.” I unlocked my car door.

He remained standing there, his hands in the pockets of his coat, blond hair gleaming in the rays from a nearby streetlight. “How have you been, anyway?”

“Pretty good. You?”

“The same. You still seeing that disc jockey?”

“Yes.” I hesitated, and when he didn’t say anything more, I asked, “What about you—are you seeing anybody?”

“Yeah, for about six months now. Nice lady, strategic planner with one of the big clothing firms. She travels a lot, but that’s all right. I never had the opportunity to get used to someone who had dinner waiting on the stove every night.”

“No, I guess you didn’t.”

Then he did a surprising thing: He leaned forward, put his hand on my shoulder, and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Take care, will you?”

He squeezed my shoulder, turned abruptly, and walked out of the parking lot. I put my hand to my cheek and watched him go, amazed.

It was the damnedest thing, I thought. And what was even more surprising than the kiss was the other factor: Not once since he’d arrived at the hotel tonight had Greg called me by that insult to my one-eighth Indian ancestry, the godawful nickname he had for me—Papoose.

Now, sitting at Don’s dining table and working on my third glass of wine, I still felt strangely suspended between different worlds. There was this world of the past, when Greg and I had been together; the world of the present and my comfortable life with Don. The violence of the Tenderloin, where human life was a cheap commodity; the security of this loft, where music and love were precious assets.

Confusion welled up inside me, and I knew it would soon be followed by tears. I’d better quit drinking, I told myself, and go to bed before I got maudlin.

I poured the rest of my wine down the sink, descended the stairs from the loft, and crossed to turn the lights off in the big central space. Then I climbed to the smaller loft, slipped out of my clothes, and crawled into the wide bed under the skylight. It was a clear night for December, and as I lay there on my back, I could see stars and high-flying wisps of clouds.

It was almost two in the morning. Right now they’d be taking last call for drinks at Don’s favorite bar, the Blue Lagoon on Army Street, not far from the KSUN studios. The Lagoon had been a gay bathhouse before the AIDS epidemic; now it was converted to a bar with a tropical theme, and a heated courtyard with wrought-iron tables surrounded the Olympic-sized swimming pool. Don and the musicians he’d been interviewing would be sitting there by the turquoise water . . .

And then I was back at the Globe Hotel. In the basement. Kneeling next to Hao Dinh’s crumpled body, and all around me was the smell of death—

I jerked awake and turned over, bunching the pillows under my head. They smelled of Don, his talcum powder, the spray he used in an unsuccessful attempt to control his thick black hair. I hugged them closer, breathing in deeply, then turned my head and caught the orange numbers on the digital clock. A little after three.

They’d probably gone someplace to eat. Or to one of the many after-hours places Don knew. He’d be here soon. All I had to do was relax and sleep.

But the bloody images returned, and I tossed about. Come on, Don, I thought. Come home and hold me. Keep me away from that basement . . . from that body . . . from that other world where I don’t want to be anymore.

CHAPTER NINE

When I climbed up to the kitchen loft the following morning, Don was at the stove frying eggs. He’d crawled into bed beside me around four o’clock, smelling of wine and stale cigarette smoke, and had been asleep before I could say more than hello. He’d had a restless sleep, though—full of tossing and mumbling—and now I could see why. From all appearances, Don had a magnificent hangover.

Now that was odd, I thought. Don liked to drink, but seldom anything stronger than red wine. And he never got hangovers.

I went over and gave him a good morning kiss. He reached around me and patted my rear. “How’s the old war wounded?” It was his ritual comment lately, referring to the bullet wound I’d suffered there on a recent case.

I was in no shape to think of a snappy comeback, so I merely took the plate he handed me and carried it to the table. “Rough night?” I said, sitting down and eyeing the eggs with distaste.

He smiled weakly and sat opposite me, coffee mug in hand. “Yeah.”

“You’re not eating?”

“No way, feeling like I do.”

“Hmmm.” I broke the egg yolk with my fork and began smearing it around my plate. “You want to tell me about it?”

He sipped coffee and grimaced. “Where shall I start? Well, the taping with the Big Money Band went well. But then we went to the Lagoon for drinks. And that band is composed of hard-drinking old boys. Came up the rough and rowdy way—long tours, booze, drugs, you name it. I couldn’t keep up with them. Didn’t even try.”

“Oh?” I looked him over skeptically.

“Well maybe I tried a little. Anyway, long about last call, one of the boys decided to jump in the pool.”

“Oh-oh.” Swimming in the Blue Lagoon pool was strictly forbidden, and even a move in that direction was grounds for refusal of service.