To The Bone

Chapter 21

The laser printer in Stover Larrabee's office whooshed quietly, adding more information to the stack that was accumulating. Larrabee was not an office person, and he had not grown up in the computer generation. He was more comfortable working in old-fashioned ways. But there was no denying that computers saved a lot of time, phone calls, and miles.

Guido Franchi, his SFPD detective friend, had provided a tantalizing piece of information. In 1997, a young woman named Katie Bensen had been reported missing. A routine police check turned up a common scenario. Katie was in her early twenties – no one knew her age for sure, or even if that was her real name. According to what she told friends, she had run away from home in her early teens and drifted ever since. She had no trouble finding places to crash; she was attractive, and willing to trade sex for money or drugs.

Katie had never been found. The police were unable to locate any family. She joined the ranks of young women who frequently went missing like that – drifters, druggies, girls who came to San Francisco looking for something or to get away from something else, living in a shadow world beneath the radar. Usually, they moved to another city because of legal or personal trouble, often changing names. Overworked police departments could not spend time and resources chasing girls who wanted to stay disappeared. But they could easily become throwaways – victims of that dangerous world, which included predators who sought them out.

One thing set Katie apart. She had claimed, to her friends, that she had been a patient of Dr. D. Welles D' Anton. For a young woman who had been living one step above the streets, this was, to say the least, unusual.

There were no more details in the police report. It was only noted that D' Anton's office had been contacted, in the hopes that they might have a current address for her. They did not. That was that.

Franchi was right – the case went nowhere, and it was several years old. Most likely, Katie had lied about her connection with D' Anton to impress her friends, and just skipped town.

But if not, she was another young woman whose unexplained death was linked to D' Anton.

The police report did mention the name of a nurse in D' Anton's office, one Margaret Pendergast. Tracking her was no problem. Ms. Pendergast was an upstanding citizen, at least on paper. She had bought a house in Anaheim in early 1998.

Which meant that she had left D' Anton's employ not long after Katie Benson's disappearance.

Larrabee found her phone number, but got no answer. He left a message on her machine, then started focusing on Dr. D. Welles D'Anton himself.

The standard background check information on D'Anton came up readily, including his license to practice in the state of California. But Larrabee realized that none of it dated back farther than twenty years. This was astonishing: his medical education should have been a matter of public record.

Larrabee started to entertain the incredible notion that D'Anton might be a fraud. He accessed a CD-ROM directory of board-certified medical specialists and looked again, scrolling carefully down the list of names.

His finger stopped tapping the key. He grinned.

The credentials were impressive – M.D. from Johns Hopkins, surgical residency at UCLA, back to Hopkins for plastic surgery certification -

But they were for one Donald W. Danton. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, November 3, 1952. Married Julia Symes in 1983. The dates jibed with a man of fifty. It had to be him.

The usual reasons for a name change were obvious – a criminal record, bad debts, adopting a stage persona. But this apostrophe had turned him from Donald Danton of Youngstown, Ohio, to Dr. D. Welles D'Anton of San Francisco, plastic surgeon to the stars.

Next, Larrabee found that the name Symes was old California money, with plenty of alumni from Stanford and USC. The LA branch of the family included several financiers and producers in the movie business. Julia Symes, D'Anton's wife, was from San Francisco but had gone to college at Pomona. She would have been an undergraduate there at the time Danton – now D'Anton – was doing his surgical residency at UCLA. They had married the year she graduated.

Larrabee was getting the feeling that D'Anton had orchestrated his career very carefully – acquiring the proper medical credentials, a wealthy wife who was connected in the film world, and a new name and persona.

A quick online search turned up no allegations of malpractice or negligence against D'Anton, with the apostrophe or without. But very often, cases didn't show up on those kinds of records because they never got that far. A physician who was threatened with a lawsuit, or a misconduct complaint, would inform his or her insurance company immediately. The company's attorneys might then persuade the complainant not to pursue it, or an agreement would be reached privately. There would be no official record of the matter.

Larrabee had put out feelers for several other avenues that might turn up these kinds of incidents. The personnel at ASCLEP, the malpractice insurance company that he and Monks worked for, might have heard about them – or other physicians, lawyers, and newspeople, of whom Larrabee knew quite a few.

But the best bet was D'Anton's own insurance company, Pacific Doctors Mutual. If any complaints had ever been lodged against him, they would be in the files. But those were highly confidential, jealously guarded from outsiders.

Hacking was beyond his level of skill. But he knew just the person for the job, Tina Bauer. He called Tina and spoke with her briefly, arranging to stop by her apartment. The day had already been a long one, with the drive to Sacramento and back. But this was business that needed taking care of.

Larrabee locked up and walked through the old building's hall, ears attentive to familiar sounds, alert for possible intruders. It was zoned for commercial use only; legally, he was not supposed to be living there. But the owners were glad to have their own private security force and looked the other way. The building housed another dozen offices, mainly small shipping companies and wholesalers. It was a throwback to an older era, like a stage set of musty offices and aging personnel moving slowly in their little enclaves, oblivious to the frenzied digitized world outside their doors. By this time of evening it was deserted.

It was after eight and getting dark when he walked outside. He liked the night, and he always felt better when he got out on the street. The San Francisco sky was a shade of midnight blue he had never seen anywhere else, and the great buildings of the skyline glimmered with elegance and power. There was no place like it. Where he had grown up – Flint, Michigan – seemed like another planet. His name, Stover, came from his mother's maiden name of Stoverud, Norwegian loggers and farmers. His father had worked the assembly lines in Flint, until that bitter closing had cost the town the little it had. By the time Stover was twenty, there was not much else to do but leave.

Traffic this evening was relaxed; rush hour was over and the Giants were playing out of town. A few human shapes carrying garbage bags or pushing shopping carts were moving, with the deliberateness of having no destination. There were a lot of street people in the neighborhood, down toward the east end of Howard Street. Pac Bell Park, new and splendid, was a fine addition to the city. But the surrounding gentrification, blocks and blocks of upscale condo and office buildings, had pushed the homeless toward the older areas. Larrabee knew the ones who had been around a while and always kept a sheaf of folded dollar bills in his pocket to hand out when he met them. This maintained a respect for him and his property, and even a sort of loyalty between him and those denizens of a world that was like a halfway house to death.

But there were always newcomers, drugged to craziness or just not giving a shit. Confrontations were still rare, and the few times that violence had seemed likely, he had been able to head it off by opening his jacket to show his pistol. But the probability kept looming larger that a gang member with his own gun, or a junkie pulling a knife out of nowhere, was going to catch him unprepared. It was a no-win situation – if he defended himself successfully, he was probably in serious trouble with the law, and if not, he was dead – and while he hated to give in, he was thinking about moving. Growing up, he had hated the grimy industrial buildings that surrounded him, and wanted only to get away. But now they brought a strange comfort.

He got in his Taurus, pulled out onto Howard, and headed toward Castro Street. This was where he had started as a rookie cop, in the Southern District south of Market Street, flanking the Mission. In this heat, there were a lot of people out – a little world on each street corner and several in between, interacting and clashing, hookers, gangbangers, drunks, addicts, the halt and lame and many insane: a microcosm of predators and victims.

Larrabee had spent more than ten years wearing the SFPD's blue uniform, and another year and a half under cover. One night he had shot a particularly vicious mugger who was preying on tourists near Fisherman's Wharf. But it was dark; the mugger had managed to ditch his pistol so that it was never found; and his defense lawyer successfully argued reasonable doubt that Larrabee had shot the right man. He had been suspended without pay. He might have been reinstated eventually, but the beating he had taken at the hands of the system that he had risked his life to protect left him bitter and disgusted. Instead, he had decided to go private.

He worked mostly alone, without the sophisticated equipment or networks of the bigger agencies. His cases were rarely dramatic; most of his income came from investigating malpractice insurance claims for a doctor-owned company called ASCLEP. This was how he and Monks had met. Monks was a case reviewer and expert witness for ASCLEP, but his medical expertise was a help in fieldwork, too, and sometimes it was good to have another body. Larrabee paid Monks back in kind when he could. Once, it had almost gotten him killed.

But there was more to the partnership, and more than friendship. Monks fascinated him.

Larrabee was under no illusions about himself. He was smart, but not intellectual. He cared, but that caring was tempered by a hard edge, a self-preservation instinct that kept his brain in control of his feelings. It wasn't something he had to work at. It was built in.

But Monks – Monks was something else. He was a South Side Chicago mick who'd spent years laying his hands on damaged bodies and dealing with all the troubles that came with that. He was not shy about fighting, physically. But underneath, Larrabee sensed another quality, much harder to grasp, that showed through in glimpses. It was like some gentle thing that was trapped in a cruel cage, desperate to break free. Sometimes it came across as childlike, sweet, and clear, or hurt and incomprehending. But other times, that desperation turned destructive, even berserk, and he sensed, too, that Monks had spent a lot of his life fighting it, trying to channel that fierce energy. He had a hard time keeping going. And Larrabee, for reasons he himself did not fully understand, was determined to make sure that he did.

The heart of the Castro District was gay and trendy. But west toward Twin Peaks, there was a more conservative maze of curving hilly residential streets that seemed to lead only to others like them. As well as Larrabee knew the city, he still got lost in there. The houses were small and set close together, not fancy, but well kept. There was a sense of watchfulness about the area.

Tina Bauer let him into the house she shared with her partner, Bev. She was a small woman in her late thirties, bony, flat-chested, and mousy. Her hair was a neutral brown, bobbed, and she wore cat's-eye glasses. You could not call her pretty, although there was a certain girlish appeal. Bev thought so. Bev weighed over two hundred pounds, worked as the night dispatcher for a trucking company, and was insanely jealous.

Except that she was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, Tina looked like she could have been an accountant, and in fact, she had been. But she had the sort of mind that grasped things differently than other people's, especially in the realm of electronic information. Fifteen years earlier, married, recently graduated from UC Berkeley, and working for Pacific Gas and Electric – the epitome of straight – she had figured out a way to shave a tiny fraction off of pennies of the utility's incoming revenue and deposit it in her own numbered account. The missing amounts were so minuscule individually, and spread so thin, they were barely noticed. By the time they added up enough to catch the accounting department's attention, she had accumulated several hundred thousand dollars.

This had launched her on a road to self-discovery, starting with two years in prison. Not surprisingly, her marriage had collapsed, but she had not liked men all that much to begin with. Over the next years, she had refined her skills to the point where she could operate with near invisibility, and she kept it small-scale. Occasionally she was questioned, as when a bank discovered that funds had been electronically moved from a place they knew about to a place they did not. But nobody had been able to make anything stick.

"What have we got?" Tina said. She was very serious and matter-of-fact. He was not sure he had ever seen her smile.

Larrabee handed her a printout with the pertinent information about D' Anton.

She scanned it, eyebrows rising. "You're going after a big fish."

"Know anything about him?"

"Just his reputation. Lifter of famous boobs and booties."

"I want you to check his malpractice insurance company files," Larrabee said. "Pacific Doctors Mutual. Any kind of complaint or irregularity that shows up."

"Did somebody's tits explode on an airplane?"

"It's nothing that simple."

"Okay," she said. "I should be able to do it tonight. Insurance company firewalls usually aren't much."

"You want some money up front?"

"We know where you live."

As he was stepping out into the hall, Tina said, "Hey, Stover." She was standing with her hands on her hips, watching him thoughtfully. Her face was stone serious, as always.

"I wouldn't mind blowing you once in a while," she said.

Larrabee had thought that he was pretty good at turning a compliment, but this one left him speechless, twisting in the wind.

"Don't worry, Bev's at work," she said. "But it would feel too weird here anyway. I could drop by your place."

"That's, uh, a lovely offer, Tina. I'm incredibly flattered."

"It's the only thing I miss, with guys. I'm very oral. Dildos aren't any good for that, I like it to feel alive. But I don't want to, you know, ask just anybody."

"No, that wouldn't be smart."

"You have to keep it secret. If Bev found out I even thought about it, she'd kill me."

"I believe you." He did.

"And you can't come in my mouth. I don't like that part."

"I promise."

"Yeah, and the check's in the mail," she said. "Keep it in mind."

In fact, it was impossible not to.

There was one more place Larrabee wanted to look at tonight, a restaurant that Eden Hale had talked about to her brother Josh. Apparently she had painted it in glowing terms – a classy establishment with an upwardly mobile clientele, a different order of business from the sorts of places where she had hung out with Ray Dreyer in her earlier life. Larrabee wondered how much time she had spent here, and if she had made any acquaintances. She had to have done something with her time, besides shopping and carrying on her affair with D' Anton.

The place was called Hanover Station. It was located several blocks west of China Basin – another industrial building that had been abandoned as industry died. Dot-commer entrepreneurs had refurbished it and opened it at the crest of that money wave, five or six years ago. Larrabee had never been inside.

When he walked in, he saw that it had been turned into a single space the size of an airplane hangar, ringed by a second-story balcony for dining. The brick walls had been left uncovered, the old hardwood on the main floor refinished. The back bar was antique, cherry or rosewood. All in all, it was not bad, although the nut must have been fearsome. The room was nowhere near full now, and he suspected it was in jeopardy, with the crashing of the markets that had built it.

He ordered a Lagavulin scotch, straight up with an ice-water back, at the bar. He paid for it with a twenty and got five back. That came as no surprise, but the drink was short. For a place that was losing business, that was the wrong direction to take. The bartender was a slick, good-looking young man, brimming with unconcealed self-admiration. Larrabee decided there was no help there for what he wanted.

He stood and sipped, casually watching the scene. The crowd was all young, mid-twenties to thirties, well-dressed, confident, used to spending money. Two cocktail waitresses circulated among the tables. Larrabee made his choice, left his empty glass on the bar with no tip, and sat at a table in her area.

She came over immediately. He had picked her because she didn't really fit this place – she looked like she would have been more at home in North Beach or the Haight. She was about thirty, tall, and very slender, dressed in close-fitting black, with long straight dark hair. She wore at least one ring on every finger, and many bracelets, all silver. She was quite attractive, although there was a certain Morticia Addams quality.

"What can I get you?" she said.

"I'd like to buy you a drink."

She rolled her eyes. "Sorry. I work till two, and I'm going straight home. Alone."

"I didn't say you had to have it with me." He laid a twenty-dollar bill on her tray.

"What do I have to do for that?" she said warily.

Larrabee handed her three photos of Eden Hale taken from the Internet, face shots with different angles and hairstyles, that he had chosen from her films. "Recognize her?"

The waitress touched one of the photos with a long-nailed fingertip. 'There was somebody who used to come around, who looks like this. I think her name was Eden?"

"That's her."

"I haven't seen her for a while."

"You won't," Larrabee said.

The bored glaze in her eyes went away. Her mouth opened a little.

"Have you got five minutes to talk to me?" he said.

"You a cop?"

"Private." He opened his wallet and showed her his license.

She was starting to look interested. "I'll meet you out front," she said.

He waited outside the front door. A sea breeze was springing up, and the moon was dimming behind thickening fog. There was not much traffic on the streets, but a few blocks away, the stream of headlights on the skyway of Interstate 80 was steady, an unending fuel line of human fodder for the city's guts.

The waitress came out and stood by him, fishing nervously for cigarettes in her purse. Larrabee took her Bic lighter from her fingers and held it while she leaned into the flame, cupping her hand against the breeze. She inhaled and stepped back, crossing her arms, one hand cupping the other elbow.

"Thanks," she said. "She's dead, that woman?"

Larrabee nodded.

"Murdered?"

"It's looking that way," he said.

She shivered. "What do you want to know?"

"What she was like. Who she hung out with. If there was anybody in particular."

"She was nice enough. She always came in alone, and I never saw her leave with anybody. But she got hit on a lot."

"She was a good-looking girl," Larrabee said.

"Yeah, but it was more than looks. There was just something about her that said 'fuck me.' I'd see the guys watching her; it was like they were back in the jungle – wanted to throw her down on the floor right there. She'd play into it, but it wasn't really even like she was prick-teasing. It's just the way she was."

"You ever overhear her talking? Figure out her story?"

"Just a little. She said she'd been an actress, but she was getting into modeling. There was something else, too. Wait a minute."

The waitress put her hand to her forehead, concentrating, with the cigarette smoking between her fingers.

"She was going to work for some famous surgeon, something like that. Seems like maybe she hinted she was going to marry him."

Larrabee's eyebrows rose. "Marry him, huh?"

"I think I heard that. I didn't pay much attention, really. I hear so many people talking about all the stuff they've got going, and I think, then why are you sitting in here trying to impress everybody?"

She inhaled deeply on the cigarette, watching him. Her eyes were softer now, the early toughness gone. It was something that happened, an odd bit of psychology, like transference. People wanted to please their interrogators, to contribute something important. People who were not criminals, at least. The suggestion that Eden had talked about marrying D' Anton was a choice bit of information. But there wasn't much else he did not already know, and he doubted there would be much more.

"One more question," he said. "How did she dress?"

The waitress shrugged. "Like everybody else here."

"Like a businesswoman? Not flashy?"

"Like she'd just come from the office."

"Did that seem strange, with her acting slutty?" She snorted with amusement. "Are you kidding?" Larrabee handed her one of his business cards. "Keep thinking about it, and ask your friends, huh? If anything turns up, give me a call."

She reached into her purse again, head ducking as her fingers searched, hair spilling around her face. It made her look more vulnerable still. She found the twenty-dollar bill and offered it back to him. "You didn't have to give me money," she said. "Come on. I've been keeping you away from your tips."

"I don't make twenty bucks in five minutes."

"Neither do I," Larrabee said.

She smiled and tossed her hair. "Maybe we should have that drink sometime."

He left with her name, Heather, and her phone number written on another one of his cards.

There were many available women in San Francisco, and Larrabee encountered them frequently through his work. That also gave him a romantic gloss that was more imagined than real. He got his share of come-ons, with the offer of sex usually there more or less immediately. This was fine with him, although, by his own lights at least, he never exploited it. But the need was there in him just like anybody else, particularly when he was in between longer relationships. Like now.

The last one of those had been Iris, the stripper with the stage name Secret, who had left two years ago to dance in Vegas. At first she had come back to stay with him often, and there was a time when it seemed like the relationship could have gotten solid. But she had slipped into another world, or maybe hardened into what she was destined to be from the beginning, with the dancing giving way to hooking and drugs. He had not heard from her in a while.

He was thinking seriously about Tina's offer. The sheer weirdness of it was intriguing, and he was reasonably sure that she wanted exactly what she said and nothing more. As for the waitress, Heather – he had been in those sorts of situations many times, and he doubted he would go for this one. The way it usually went, there would be a few nights of entertaining discoveries about each other's lives, accompanied by energetic lust. Then the unraveling would start – the realization that there were no real common interests or compatibility – and it would take its course, probably with a fair dose of pain and trouble.

Although there would be those first few nights.

He got into the Taurus and punched the number of D' Anton's former nurse again.

This time, a woman answered.

"Mrs. Pendergast? Margaret?"

"I'm not interested. And take my name out of your computer." She sounded middle-aged, with the sharp-edged reply of someone weary of endless solicitations.

"I'm not trying to sell you anything, Margaret. My name's Stover Larrabee. I left you a message earlier."

"Oh? I haven't checked, I just got in."

Larrabee was relieved. At least there was no overt hostility, yet.

"I'm a private investigator. Calling you from San Francisco."

"What about?" she said, cautious now.

"About a young woman named Katie Bensen, who went missing back when you were working for Dr. D'Anton. Do you remember that?"

There was a longish silence. Then she said, "I do. But I don't especially want to."

"Will you give me just a minute, Margaret?" he said quickly. "So I can explain to you why you should?"

Larrabee lowered his voice to a confidential tone, just the two of them in on this delicate and crucial matter, and plied his trade.