Camouflage

21

Tamara was beside herself over what she called “those two bitches’ escape.” Not that she blamed Alex Chavez for the lost tail. He was an experienced field man and he’d taken every precaution, but no op can maintain road surveillance when he’s been spotted and the subjects are bent on ditching him. The dangerous last-second lane change would have caught anybody in the profession by surprise.

Alex felt bad about it, though. He’d driven straight back to Dogpatch to stake out the 20th Street house in case McManus and Carson decided to go back there. Chances of that happening were nil now, but Alex had insisted. And Tamara and I both knew his professional ethics wouldn’t allow him to take any overtime pay for the extended stakeout, either.

What upset and frustrated her-me, too-was that we were still hamstrung by the lack of hard evidence necessary to convince the law to take immediate action. What I’d found in the house was plenty suspicious, but we couldn’t report it without admitting that I’d been guilty of illegal trespass and unlawful entry, and my uncorroborated testimony alone wouldn’t constitute sufficient cause for a judge to issue a search warrant. Cops and judges frown on private investigators subverting the law in any way. So does the state Board of Licenses. And never mind the rationale.

By the time I got back to the office, Tamara had used the information The Dog Hole barfly Frank Quarles had given me to run a deep backgrounder on Gregory Pappas. The name wasn’t all that uncommon, but she was sure she had the right man. Born in Athens, Greece, in 1929, immigrated to the U.S. in 1946. Worked for a San Francisco relative who owned a Greek restaurant. Opened his own place on Polk Street, the Acropolis Restaurant, in 1959 and operated it until 1992, when it was gutted by an accidental grease fire. Underinsured, so he hadn’t been able to rebuild or reopen elsewhere-but he’d gotten enough of a settlement, and apparently had had enough put away, to live comfortably in retirement. Married, no children. Wife deceased in 1998. Never owned a home; lifelong apartment dweller. After his wife’s death, moved from the apartment he’d shared with her in the Anza Vista neighborhood to a smaller apartment in the Potrero. Lived at that address for a dozen years until the building was sold and went condo. Residence after that presumably the house in Dogpatch, but nothing to confirm it. Present whereabouts unknown. And most significantly, no death record anywhere.

“They killed him,” Tamara said. “McManus and Carson. Just like they killed Rose O’Day and Virden and God knows how many others.”

“Murder for profit.”

“Murder factory. Rent that room to somebody with no close friends or relatives, somebody with money or other valuables. Victim doesn’t come to them soon enough, one or both of ’em go trolling for one in Mission Bay or SoMa or Potrero Hill. That’s how they found Rose O’Day, right?”

“According to Selma Hightower.”

“Then when they got everything they could from those poor old folks, they offed ’em. Probably been doing it the whole seven years they lived there.”

“The real Roxanne McManus doesn’t fit that victim profile,” I pointed out.

“Maybe she was how they got started, part of Mama Psycho’s plan to set up the dog-boarding front.”

“Here’s another possibility,” I said. “Mama Psycho, as you call her, needed a new identity because she has a criminal record somewhere. Might even be a fugitive warrant out on her.”

“Carson, too, I’ll bet. Thelma and Louise.”

“Who?”

“That’s right, the only flicks you watch are old black-and-whites on TV.”

“What do movies have to do with this?”

“Never mind,” she said. “So McManus and Carson are running this murder factory, nobody suspects anything for seven years, and then along come Virden and us investigating and they can see the whole thing starting to unravel. Virden thinks things over in The Dog Hole after his first visit to the house and decides maybe we didn’t screw up after all. Goes back to confront the impostor, threatens to go to the cops-and that’s the end of him.”

I agreed that that was a likely enough scenario, given the bloodstain I’d found in the living room.

“We keep investigating,” Tamara said, “and McManus tries to warn you off with the lawsuit threat. Smoke screen to buy them time-they’ve already decided to haul ass out of Dodge. We’re getting too close to the truth and they can’t afford to wait around. So they empty their bank accounts, dig up their cash stash, whatever, and start loading up their SUV. Man, I wish we had some idea where they took all that stuff of theirs.”

“Storage unit somewhere, maybe.”

“Come back for it later, after things’ve cooled down? That’d be pretty risky. Seems more likely they’d want to get far away from San Francisco and never come back.”

“Depends on what their plans are. They’re too shrewd to run blind-they’d have a hideout set up or in mind.”

“So they could be anywhere now.”

“Just about. One thing they’ll do before they go very far is switch that SUV for another set of wheels, make themselves even harder to trace.”

“We can’t just sit back and let them get away,” Tamara said grimly. “We’ve got to do something.”

I said, “I’ve already told the SPCA about the abandoned dogs. And I’ve got a call in to Jack Logan. When I hear from him, I’ll lay out everything we suspect. He knows I wouldn’t come to him unless I was reasonably sure I had good cause.”

“But will he do anything even if you fess up to unlawful entry?”

“Whatever he can. The abandoned dogs should give the police the right to inspect the kennels. McManus’s and Carson’s prints are bound to be in there, and if we’re right that the two of them are fugitives, that’ll be enough cause for a search warrant for the house.”

“All that’s gonna take a long time,” Tamara said. “Too long.”

“No use worrying about what we can’t control. Even if APBs were put out right away, it might already be too late. They could already be off the highways by now, holed up someplace.”

“Yeah.”

“Look at it this way,” I said. “No matter what happens, they won’t be killing any more people in Dogpatch.”

“I’d feel better about that if I knew they won’t be killing any more people anywhere.” She was silent for several seconds. Then, “I keep wondering what happened to the bodies. No place on the property where they could’ve buried ’em?”

“Not unless there’s a pit hidden under the kennels.”

“… You think maybe?”

“No, I don’t. Chancy disposal method anyway.”

“What about that sick dude in Ohio a couple of years ago, had decomposing and mummified corpses all over his house and yard?”

“Different type of case. Trust me-there aren’t any corpses hidden on the Dogpatch property.”

“So maybe they cut ’em up and fed ’em to the dogs.”

“Pretty grisly work for a couple of middle-aged women.”

“Well? Men don’t have a monopoly on being monsters.”

She was right enough about that. But whatever the answer, I had a feeling it wasn’t chopped-up human dog food.

Jack Logan hadn’t returned my call by the time I headed home. I’d left two messages for him, one on his cell’s voice mail, the other at the Hall of Justice, both stressing the urgency of the information I had for him, but he’d become a busy man since his promotion to assistant chief. The constant demands on his time came not only from the PD but also from the city’s political hierarchy and individuals a lot more powerful and influential than I would ever be. Jack and I had been friends a long time, but that didn’t count for much on the priority ladder.

In the old days I’d had other friends in the department I could have appealed to, but they were all gone now-retired, working for other police departments or at other jobs. One more example of the effects of time erosion. There were a few inspectors I’d had business dealings with, but I didn’t know any of them well enough to approach them with a handful of nothing much more than speculation based on circumstantial evidence. Logan was the only one who’d give Tamara’s and my suspicions the attention they deserved.

Mild argument with Kerry when I got home. She wanted to go out to dinner-Emily was spending the night with a friend-and I wanted to stay in, relax after the long day, wait for Logan’s call. She won the argument, as she usually does when she really wants something, by a combination of cajolery, guilt-tripping (we hadn’t been out together alone in weeks), and subtle sexual promise. Not that she used sex the way some women did, as a form of extortion. She’d never said no to me just because she didn’t get her way-too honest and caring for that kind of nonsense. But if she did get her way, her natural tendency was to be more enthusiastic in her lovemaking. I may be crowding geezerhood, but I can still be as swayed by the prospect of enthusiasm as I was in my younger days.

So we went out to dinner, at a Sicilian restaurant that had just opened up in Noe Valley. My one proviso being that I keep my cell phone on because Logan still hadn’t rung back. Normally doing that goes against my grain-people who get calls and then chatter in public places are near the top of my list of my pet peeves-but this was a special circumstance. Kerry had no objection when I explained the situation on the drive down to 24th Street.

The restaurant was crowded; we had to wait twenty minutes for a table. Worth the wait: the food and the service were both first-rate. I had chicken marsala, Kerry a pasta dish called finocchio con sarde, made with fennel and sardines, that tasted a whole lot better than it sounds, and we shared a bottle of light Corinto wine. The place was atmospherically decorated and the lighting kept purposely dim in order to maximize the effect of candlelight. Kerry looks good in any light, the more so since she’d treated herself (and me) to the facelift after her bout with breast cancer, but there’s something about candle glow that makes her especially attractive. Gives her auburn hair a kind of fiery shine, her face a luminous, ageless quality. The longer I looked at her across the table, the more glad I was that I’d lost the argument tonight. Enthusiasm. Right. I could feel mine rising by the minute.

We were sipping the last of our wine when she broke a brief conversational lull by saying, “Tom Bates just bought a second home, a small ranch down in the Carmel Valley.”

“Good for him. He can afford it.”

“We could afford one, too, you know.”

“What, in Carmel Valley? I don’t think so.”

“No, you’re right; the Carmel area is too expensive. But somewhere else-Lake County, the Sierras, the north coast.”

“You’re not serious about this?”

“Why not? Wouldn’t you like to have a weekend getaway place?”

“I don’t know… would you?”

“Yes. I love the city as much as you do, but a change of scenery now and then would be good for both of us. Emily, too. I don’t mean day trips-quiet weekends, minivacations.”

“You sure we can afford it?” Kerry handled all the household financial matters; she has a much better head for figures than I do.

“Since Jim Carpenter promoted me to vice president we can. The market’s down now; we could get a small cabin or cottage for a reasonable price.” The prospect excited her; the candlelight emphasized the high color in her cheeks. “And we could take our time looking in different areas until we find just the right place. It’d be fun.”

“You really think we’d use a second home enough to make it worthwhile? I mean, we don’t get away on weekend trips much as it is.”

“That’s just the point,” she said. “We wouldn’t keep finding excuses to stay home or take only short day trips if we had a place of our own to go to. You’re supposed to be semiretired, but you’re right back to working four and five days a week. Wouldn’t you like to take more time off, do something besides sit around the condo when you’re not at the agency?”

“You work longer hours than I do.”

“Yes, and I’d like to cut back a little myself eventually. Don’t you think we’re entitled to some leisure time? We’re not exactly spring chickens, you know.”

“Don’t need to remind me.”

“There are other benefits, too,” she said. “Buying a piece of California real estate is always a good investment, no matter where it is, and it’ll help our tax situation. And you know we’re almost out of storage space at the condo. We could move a lot of stuff to a getaway place, not just nonessentials but utilitarian items like clothes and furniture. The living-room couch, for instance. I’d been wanting to buy a new- What’s the matter? Why are you staring off like that?”

“Storage space,” I said.

“… What about it?”

“Piece of California real estate. Storage space.”

“Are you all right? You have the oddest look on your face-”

“Lightbulb just went off.” I slid my chair back. “Wait here; finish your wine. I’ll be right back.”

“Where’re you going?”

“Make a phone call to Tamara.”

I tried her home number first; it was late enough so that she should be there by now. Five rings, while I stood shivering on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. On the sixth ring, she answered sounding grumpy.

“Got me out of the tub,” she said. “What’s up?”

“That piece of rural property Rose O’Day inherited. Didn’t you say it was in Marin County?”

“Some place called the Chileno Valley.”

“What kind of property? How big?”

“Farmland. Thirty acres.”

“Buildings on it?”

“I’d have to check the tax records, but-” She broke off and then let out a little yip; quick on the uptake, as always. “And the Chileno Valley is west of Highway One-oh-one going north. That’s where McManus and Carson were headed- that’s where they’re hiding out!”