Camouflage

12

The Room for Rent sign was absent from the fence in front of the McManus house. No surprise there; it didn’t take long to find single tenants with modest needs in neighborhoods like Dogpatch that had easy public-transit access to downtown. The driveway was empty today, but the house wasn’t.

Deja vu when I thumbed the doorbell: the Hound of the Baskervilles started his furious barking, a woman’s commanding voice said, “Quiet, Thor!” to shut him up, and Jane Carson opened up wearing her toothy smile. One good look at me and the smile turned upside down.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you again.”

“Me again. I’d like to speak to Ms. McManus.”

“She’s not home.”

“When do you expect her back?”

“No specific time. She has a busy schedule.”

“Me, too. Busy, busy.”

As before, the dog sat on his haunches behind and to one side of the woman, watching me with his yellow eyes. Maybe he sensed her chilly attitude or maybe he just didn’t like me any more than I liked him; the eyes looked hot and his fangs were visible in what I took to be a silent growl.

“What did you wish to see R.L. about?”

I held up Virden’s photo. Carson looked at it, but only for a couple of seconds. “This man.”

“I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?”

“David Virden, Ms. McManus’s ex-husband. The man who came to see her Tuesday afternoon.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I was away Tuesday afternoon.”

“And she didn’t mention his visit?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Say anything about him after I was here on Monday?”

“No.”

“Tell me, Ms. Carson, just what is it you do here? Employee, tenant, companion?”

“I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”

“Simple question.”

“All right, then, I’ll give you a simple answer. I work with the dogs.”

“Been with Canine Customers long?”

“Not long, no.” Very cold and crisp now. Thor’s ears pricked up; a little more of his fangs showed. “Is there anything else?”

I got out one of my business cards, jotted a “please contact me ASAP” note on the back, and handed it to Carson-doing it all slowly with one eye on Thor. He sat still, but the yellow eyes followed every move I made. “Make sure she gets this, please. I’ll expect to-”

That was as far as I got, because she shut the door in my face.

I made a fifteen-minute driving canvass over a radius of several blocks. There was no sign of Virden’s black Porsche Cayman-or any other model or color Porsche. Finding him or his vehicle wasn’t going to be that easy.

McManus’s immediate neighbors were the next order of business. I didn’t make any effort to conceal my continued presence in the area; in fact, I parked across the street from Canine Customers and took my time walking around. If Carson was paying attention, I wanted her to see me and relay the information to McManus. It wouldn’t bother them much if they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, it might shake them up to know they were being investigated. Shake up people with something to hide and it can lead to mistakes and answers.

House canvassing is not one of my favorite tasks. Most city residents are leery of strangers these days, no matter how well dressed, polite, and nonthreatening, and if I have to flash my ID, it turns some hostile and makes others close up like cactus flowers at sundown. These were the reactions I got from the first five neighbors who were home and took the trouble to answer their doorbells. Only two deigned to look at Virden’s photo and none of the five could or would own up to seeing him or his Porsche in the neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.

The sixth person I talked to, a woman in one of the houses on Minnesota Street catercorner to the McManus place, was the only one who had anything to tell me-of a sort. And not without some initial confusion and difficulty.

She was in her late sixties, the owner of a pile of frizzy gray hair, a pair of beadily alert gray eyes, plump cheeks red stained with broken capillaries, and a set of false teeth that had been improperly fitted and gave her something of an overbite. She took one look at me and said in disgusted tones, “Oh, God, a new one.”

“No, ma’am, I’m not selling-”

“You’re pretty old, aren’t you?”

“Old?”

“To be chasing after young women. Laurie’s not even forty yet.”

“I’m afraid you have me-”

“Have you? Not me, mister. You or any other man, now that my husband’s gone to his reward.” She spoke with a slight lisp, the false teeth clicking now and then like little finger snaps. “My daughter’s got no morals, same like her father. Not much taste, either, I must say. You’re old enough to be her father… and married, too.”

“I am, yes, but-”

“Not even trying to hide it, wedding ring right there on your finger. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“You don’t understand-”

“The devil I don’t understand. I know all about men like you, I was married to a cheating old goat myself for thirty-seven years. Go away; go back to your wife. Laurie’s not here.”

She started to close the door. I got a foot in the way, the photograph up between her face and mine, and said fast so she couldn’t interrupt, “I don’t know any woman named Laurie. I’m looking for a missing person, the man in this photo, he was in this neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.”

She batted her eyes, clicked her teeth, flushed a little, and said, “Oh my God,” in a subdued and mortified tone. “I thought you were screwing my daughter.”

“So I gathered.”

“I’m sorry. You must think I’m awful, talking to you the way I did…”

“No, ma’am,” I lied. I eased the photo a little closer. “Do you recognize this man?”

She squinted, clicked, and lisped, “No. Never saw anybody looks like that.”

“He was driving a new black Porsche.”

“I don’t know anything about cars. I wouldn’t know a Porsche from a petunia.”

“Sports car. Pretty distinctive.”

“Never saw it. The man’s missing, you say? He live around here?”

“No. Visiting R. L. McManus.”

“Oh, the dog woman. New boarder over there?”

“No. He was there on a personal matter.”

“Gate sign’s down, so she’s got a new one. That’s why I asked. Steady string in and out of there, you’d think some of them would stay longer than they do. Must be the damn dogs barking all the time that drives them away.”

“How well do you know her, Mrs.-?”

“Hightower, Selma Hightower. Just to talk to, that’s all. Standoffish. Keeps to herself.”

“Jane Carson?”

“Hah. No, and I keep my distance when I see her.”

“Why is that?”

“Always has that big black dog with her. Dogs like that make me nervous. Supposed to be well trained, but the way they look at you…” She shivered, double-clicked. “Brrrr.”

“Can you tell me what their relationship is?”

“Whose relationship? Her and that dog?”

“The two women. Does Ms. Carson, who works for Ms. McManus, live on the premises?”

“Lives there. Moved in together six or seven years ago. What they do is none of my business.” A valid enough comment, which she spoiled by adding, “Couple of lesbians, if you ask me. Hardly ever see a man around the place, except when one shows up with a dog to be boarded.”

“All the boarders are ladies, then?”

“How should I know? You think I go peeking under their tails?”

I said, as patiently as I could, “I meant the people who rent a room there.”

“Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so? Almost all women, that’s right. One old man early last year, must’ve been eighty-he’s the only one I remember.”

“One room for rent or more than one?”

“Just one. That’s what Rose told me.”

“Rose?”

“She lived over there for a few months a while back. Nice person, my age, widow like me only she didn’t have any kids, lucky her. We had a lot in common. Bingo, All My Children, a toddy now and then. She liked her toddies, Rose did. That’s how she met the dog woman. Not McManus, the other one. Carson.”

“… I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

She gave me a well-then-you-must-be-dense look. “In a cocktail lounge. Both of them having toddies and they got to talking and that’s how Rose ended up here. She couldn’t afford the rents down there anymore.”

“Down where?”

“What they call SoMa now. That’s where Rose and the dog woman were having their toddies.”

“Do you remember the name of the cocktail lounge?”

“Rose never said. Why do you care what cocktail lounge?”

“Curiosity. What was Rose’s last name?”

“O’Day. Rose O’Day. Pretty name.”

“Yes. When did-”

“Irish,” Mrs. Hightower said.

“… Pardon?”

“Rose. She was Irish.”

“When did she move out?”

“Well, let’s see. Must’ve been more than three years now. That’s right, three years in February.” Click, frown, double-click. “Kind of funny,” she said.

“How so?”

“Never said good-bye. Just up and left. And us with a date to play bingo over at the church. I saw the dog woman, McManus, down at the market a few days afterward and asked her how come Rose left so sudden. Said she went back to Michigan-that’s where she’s from, Saginaw, Michigan, like in the song. Moved back to Saginaw, Michigan, to live with her brother.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t,” Selma Hightower said, “and neither do I. Rose told me she was an only child.”

“Well, people sometimes say that if they’re estranged from a relative-”

“Hah. Rose didn’t have anybody to be estranged from. She didn’t have anybody, period. Alone in the world after her husband went to his reward. All her family dead and gone and her all alone in the world.”

Half an hour after I left Mrs. Hightower, I finally located somebody who’d seen David Virden on Tuesday. Two somebodies, in fact. Both of them in the same place-a watering hole on Third just around the corner from 20th Street called, appropriately if unappealingly, The Dog Hole.

It was one of those venerable neighborhood places that cater to a mixed clientele. At its peak hours you’d probably find blue-collar workers, Yuppies, bikers, scroungers, retired people, lonely individuals of both sexes looking for companionship of one kind or another, and maybe an upscale hooker or two trolling for customers. At this time of day, early afternoon, what you had was a small core of habitual drinkers and pensioners with no better spot to spend their time. Three men were drinking beer and playing cribbage in one of a row of high-backed booths. A rail-thin man in his seventies and a heavily rouged fat woman twenty years younger occupied stools at the bar, neither of them having anything to do with the other.

The bartender was a bulky guy in his forties-a weight lifter, judging from the bulge of his pecs and biceps in a tight short-sleeved shirt. I ordered a draft Anchor Steam, and when he brought it I showed him Virden’s photograph and asked my question. He gave the snapshot a bored study, started to shake his head, looked again, and said, “Yeah, he was in here. Double shot of Jameson, beer back.”

“What time?”

“Around this time.”

“Alone?” I asked.

“All alone. You a cop?”

“Private. He’s missing; I’m looking for him.”

“That right?” But not as if he cared. Life outside a gym and a weight room probably bored him silly. “Never saw him before or since.”

The old gent got off his stool and sidled down to where I was, bringing his empty glass with him. “Mind if I have a look?” I held the photo up so he could squint at it through rimless glasses. “Yep, I seen him, too. Stranger dressed real nice, suit and tie. But it wasn’t around this time.”

“No? When was it?”

“Well…” He set his empty on the bar and licked his lips in a mildly suggestive way. I gestured to the bartender, who shrugged and filled the glass from a bottle of port wine.

“Thank you, sir. To your health.” He had some of his port, an almost dainty sip as if he intended to make it last. “Must’ve been about one thirty when the fella come in. No more’n five minutes after I did. Remember, Stan?”

Another shrug. “If you say so.”

“You didn’t happen to talk to him?” I asked.

“No, sir. He wasn’t the sociable type.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Fella had a mad-on about something. Face like a thundercloud, you know what I mean? Sat there and swallowed his drinks and then all of a sudden he smacks the bar and out he goes.”

“Smacked the bar?”

“Real hard. Went out of here like something just bit him on his ass.”

Or he’d made up his mind about something, I thought. Like maybe going back for another conversation with the woman who was supposed to be his ex-wife.

I was out of The Dog Hole and in my car, but not driving yet, when my cell phone went off. Small favors. Or so I thought until I answered the call.

“R. L. McManus. Why are you harassing me?” This in a clipped voice as cold as ice.

“I’d hardly call two brief visits to your home harassment, Ms. McManus.”

“I told you on Monday I wanted nothing more to do with you or my ex-husband. And I told him the same thing when he showed up here the next day.”

“Did you, now.”

“In no uncertain terms. And I suppose he sent you back to bother me with more of his annulment nonsense?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t spoken to him since Monday.”

“Then why were you at my home again today?”

“Because he’s gone missing.”

One, two, three seconds before she said, “Missing?”

“No one’s seen him since Tuesday afternoon.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that. He was here for no more than five minutes and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

“Must’ve been kind of an awkward meeting.”

“It was. Awkward and unnecessary.”

“How did he look to you?”

“… What kind of question is that?”

“Eight years since your divorce. Had he changed much?”

“Not very much, no.”

“Recognized him immediately, then.”

“I’m not likely to forget a man I was married to, am I?”

“And he recognized you right away.”

“Of course he did. I haven’t changed that much, either.” Suspicion in her voice now. “What are you getting at?”

“All you talked about is the annulment, is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right, and that’s the last question I’m going to answer. If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll sue you for harassment. You can tell David that goes for him, too, when you find him. Is that understood?”

What’s understood, lady, I thought, is that you’re a damn liar. But I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything, just pressed the Off button on the cell.

I was pretty near convinced that Tamara was right about McManus. People who overreact by threatening lawsuits usually have plenty to hide. Question was, just how dirty was she?