Spook

10

It took me all of thirty seconds at Human Services to find out the social worker’s full name: Evelyn Sukimoto. But it was a good three hours before I could get an audience with her.

She was out of the office, the young starchy type I spoke to said, and wouldn’t be back until mid-afternoon. Yes, she had a cell phone, but he couldn’t give me the number without her permission. No, he couldn’t tell me where she was now.

I said, “Mid-afternoon. That mean three o’clock?”

He offered up one of those looks young people reserve for those of us past the age of forty, the kind that equates age with creeping senility. “Ms. Sukimoto,” he said firmly, “will be back at her desk mid-afternoon.”

Young, frozen-faced, on the supercilious side, and knew just how to make an imprecise statement sound precise and authoritative. A perfect candidate for the mayor’s public relations team. Hizzoner was going to need more spin doctors once the Patterson scandal broke. I considered telling Frozen Face he ought to apply, but suppose he took me seriously and went ahead and did it? Sobering thought. I settled for a toothy grin and a broad wink, and left him sitting there to puzzle that one out.

Rather than return to the office, I checked in with Tamara again on the car phone. I’d had enough today, up close and personal, of her blue funk. Two more messages, which she delivered in a terse growl. Any further word from Jake Runyon? No. Anything to discuss? No.

One of the messages had to do with the investigation for the engineering firm; I returned that call first, but the guy was away from his desk. Telephone tag. The other message was from Ted Smalley, the office manager at McCone Investigations. I had no trouble getting him on the line.

“Almost done here, Ted. One more thing to verify and I’ll have everything fully documented.”

“How soon, do you think?”

“Shouldn’t be long. Tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest.”

“Can you get the complete file to us by midday Thursday? Sharon wants everything wrapped up by close of business Friday so we can all enjoy the party. She has a meeting scheduled with the deputy mayor and the D.A. on Monday morning.”

“I don’t see any problem. They’re not fixing to break the story before Christmas, are they?”

“No, not until after the holidays,” Ted said. “But the D.A. is eager to start preparing his indictments. Naturally. He has his eye on the state attorney general’s seat.”

“Uh-huh. So I’ve heard.”

“The party is the other reason I called — to make sure you and Kerry will be attending. Tamara, too, of course.”

“Party?”

“The pier’s Season of Sharing party. I mentioned it to you last week.”

“Oh, right. Right.”

“You will be coming?”

“It’s on the calendar,” I said without enthusiasm.

“Sharon will be very disappointed if you’re a no-show.”

“We’ll be there, Ted. But I wouldn’t count on Tamara.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Personal problems. Not too serious.” I hope, I added silently. “What time again? Seven?”

“Six. Six to nine. Come early.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I lied.

The fact is, I don’t much enjoy parties of any kind. Large gatherings, no matter how festive or charitable, make me feel claustrophobic; I don’t mix well, I’m no good at small talk, even with people I know, and my mind inevitably goes blank and shrivels up like a moldy nut in a shell. Kerry keeps trying to socialize me and it keeps not working. The quiet of home and hearth is what I prefer, the more so during the Christmas season. The one other large holiday party I’d attended, at her insistence — the infamous Gala Family Christmas Charity Benefit years ago — had been an unmitigated disaster for several reasons, not the least of which was my having allowed myself to be stuffed into a Santa Claus suit and little kiddies to dent my knees while they shared their innermost toy lusts.

The Season of Sharing affair wouldn’t be that bad. It too was an annual charity benefit, but on a much smaller scale, put on by McCone Investigations and the other businesses at Pier 24-½. I’d been to a couple of them — Sharon is one of the last persons I would ever willingly offend — and I had survived. I’d survive this one, too, if I approached it in the right spirit.

And the right spirit started with not worrying about it days in advance. What I needed right now was a way to pass the time until mid-afternoon. The only one with any appeal had nothing to do with business. Well, so what? Might as well start getting rid of the workaholic mindset a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

I drove up to Pacific Heights, lucked into a parking space a block from the building that houses my flat. My soon-to-be-former flat. The decision to semiretire had come with a corollary: get rid of unnecessary possessions and consolidate my life. I’d had the rent-controlled flat almost as long as I’d been a freelance investigator, and for a time after Kerry and I were married I’d split my time between it and her Diamond Heights condo — an unconventional arrangement that had worked pretty well, giving both of us the space and privacy we needed after years of living alone. But gradually I’d found myself spending more and more time at the condo; it was home now, and had been even before Emily came into our lives. Over the past year I’d slept a total of two nights at the flat, both for business-related reasons. The place no longer felt the same to me. It was as if, walking in, I was entering a series of rooms that were only distantly familiar, like a house or apartment where you lived many years ago; as if I’d already moved out. A little more than two weeks, and it would cease to be mine. New year, new lease for somebody else. I wondered if I’d miss it any after I turned over the keys. Maybe a little, but not much.

There were only a few things left here that I wanted to keep. One piece of furniture, an antique secretary desk. Some personal stuff. And the bulk of my collection of 6,000 pulp magazines. There was room at the condo for all of these, though we’d need to do some rearranging and buy several new bookcases.

Cartons of pulps that I’d already packed were piled in the living room; only about two thousand were left on shelves. Several more cartons containing my long run of Black Mask and other valuable titles I’d already transported to the condo. I took off my coat and set to work filling the few remaining empty boxes, making another mental note to round up additional empties before my next visit. Maybe this time, with four or five such notes stored, I would remember to do it.

Pulp-paper magazines, with their gaudy covers and brittle, untrimmed edges and melodramatic stories of a vanished era, were a pleasure to handle. Even tucked into protective Mylar bags, their faintly musty odor permeated a room in a heady sort of way. I’d started collecting them in my late teens, and at one time I’d been an active, even aggressive buyer, poring over sales catalogs and haunting used bookshops and flea markets in my spare time. But then I’d met Kerry, and there’d been other changes good and bad, capped by Emily’s arrival, and my interest in pulps had declined to the point where I seldom even looked at them anymore.

Now, though, with more free time in the offing, my enthusiasm had rekindled. I’d started unbagging and reading stories at random, here and at the condo. I’d dug out my old want list of missing issues of Black Mask, Dime Detective, and half a dozen other titles and given it to Ted Smalley’s significant other, Neal Osborn, who was an antiquarian bookseller with worldwide contacts. Once I had the entire collection moved and reshelved, I would catalog it and then begin upgrading the tattier issues. The prospect was energizing. Who said work was the be-all and end-all of a man’s existence? Who said retirement was just a period of limbo between living and dying? Me, once, but not anymore.

I packed up six cartons and hauled them out to the car. Two at a time, just to prove that I could do it without working up much of a sweat.

Mid-afternoon did not mean three o’clock, after all, not in the Department of Human Services. Evelyn Sukimoto wasn’t there when I walked in at five minutes before three. She wasn’t there at three-fifteen, or at three-thirty. At twenty to four I caught the smarmy young guy giving me a satisfied little grin, as if he enjoyed watching me sit and wait. He’d make a perfect spin doctor, all right. Help cover backsides, help screw the citizens who didn’t contribute campaign funds and couldn’t be bought. Up the machine! Politics for politicians! Don’t legislate, obfuscate and manipulate!

People came in, people went out. Staff, mostly, a good ethnic mix of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Caucasians. The younger ones wore determined, upbeat expressions, moved with a certain brisk purpose; the older ones seemed tired and stoic, their movements almost lethargic. No surprise there. Urban social work is a young person’s game. The players under thirty believe they can make a difference, and work hard at the job. The veterans have had too many daily encounters with grinding poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, spousal abuse, street abuse, plus all the myriad forms of political b.s., to retain an outward show of optimism. Some had turned bitter, cynical. Even the ones who remained idealists at heart had a defeated, worn-out demeanor, like structurally sound buildings with weathered, graffiti-scarred facades.

Evelyn Sukimoto was one of the young, determined variety. She showed up finally at two minutes past four, fast-stepping as if she couldn’t wait to get to her desk. She was about twenty-five, slender, nice features; silky, glistening black hair hung almost to her waist. Frozen Face glanced up at her as she approached his desk, then quickly avoided eye contact by peering again at his computer screen. Right in character: He wasn’t going to tell her she had a visitor. But I was already on my feet, and I got to her before she could pass through to the inner sanctum.

“Ms. Sukimoto?”

She didn’t know me and I didn’t look homeless, but she offered up a nice little smile anyway. “Yes?”

I said I’d been waiting to talk to her and could she give me ten minutes or so of her time? “It’s about the homeless man who was murdered last week. Spook.”

She lost the smile. “Are you with the police?”

“Private investigator.” I proved it to her with my license photostat, told her what we’d been retained to do.

“Well... all right, come with me.”

We went through the door, then through a maze of cubicles to one with her name on a little plate next to its doorless entrance. Desk, desk chair, straight-backed chair, and not much else. We both sat down.

“I don’t know how I can help you,” she said. “Spook wasn’t one of my clients; I hardly knew him. Why did you come to me?”

I relayed what Jake Runyon had told Tamara. The smile came back, sliced wry this time, when she heard Pete Snyder’s name.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Pete the Stud.”

“Stud?”

“He trunks so, anyway. Hits on me every time he sees me.”

“Sounds like you don’t much like him.”

“What’s to like? He’s married, for one thing. Even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

“Too pushy?”

“Too white. I don’t date white guys.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“I was married to one for ten months. That’s why.”

Or to that.

“Not that I’m bitter or anything,” Ms. Sukimoto lied. “It’s just that... well, he was such a shit. My ex, I mean. And you know the old expression. Once burned, twice shy.”

I made a polite noise this time. Intended it to be polite, at least. It came out sounding like a dyspeptic grunt.

“Anyway, like I said, I hardly knew that poor man. Murdered... my God, of all people. I still have trouble believing it. But I don’t know a thing about him or why he was killed.”

“You told Snyder you’d had an inquiry about Spook. A caller who wanted to know where to find him.”

“Well, I didn’t have an inquiry. I mean, the man on the phone didn’t t ask for me, specifically.”

“Who did he ask for?”

“Spook’s caseworker. Janet Coolibra.”

“By name?”

“No, I don’t think so. The call was referred to Janet’s number. She had to go out for a few minutes and she was expecting another call, so she asked me to pick up for her. That’s how I happened to talk to the man.”

“Did he identify himself?”

“No. All he said was that he was trying to locate a homeless man named Spook.”

“You ask him why?”

“He said Spook might be somebody he knew once. And if so, maybe he could help him get off the streets.”

“And you told him about Visuals, Inc.?”

“I didn’t know about Visuals, Inc. then. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have given out the information to a stranger over the phone.”

“Did you give him Janet’s name?”

“Yes. He said he’d contact her.”

“Did he, do you know?”

“He didn’t. She never heard from him.”

“How did he sound to you? Young, old?”

“Not young.”

“How old, would you say?”

“Well... not ancient, but... you know, an older man.”

That statement was accompanied by a sidewise flick of her gaze, as if she were thinking, You know, somebody your age. Youth is a wonderful thing — if you happen to be looking at the world through young eyes.

I asked, “How would you characterize his tone?”

“Characterize?”

“Casual, determined, angry?”

“I don’t know, sort of... cold and flat, I guess. The only time it changed, got a little angry, was after I put him on hold. Oh, and there was something funny about his voice.”

“Funny how?”

“Well, kind of slurred. But not as if he was drunk.”

“Speech impediment?”

“Something like that.”

“You said you put him on hold. Why?”

“Janet’s other call came through — call forwarding.”

“At what point in the conversation?”

“We hadn’t been talking long,” Ms. Sukimoto said, “less than a minute. I think I’d just said I couldn’t help him, I wasn’t Spook’s caseworker, and he was saying couldn’t I just give him some idea of where he could find Spook.”

“How long’d you keep him on hold?”

“Oh, a couple of minutes. I had to take a message for Janet.”

“And he didn’t like being kept waiting.”

“No. I didn’t mean to but I guess I cut him off kind of abruptly to answer the other call. He said something about that, told me not to do it again — don’t put him on hold again because he was calling long distance.”

“Those were his words, long distance?”

Wrinkles appeared in Ms. Sukimoto’s brow. “Actually, that wasn’t what he said. He said he was calling from... some county. What was it? Oh, right. Mono County. ‘I’m calling from Mono County.’ ”

“Is that all? No specific location?”

“That’s all.”

Mono County was in the eastern part of the state, in the high desert along the Nevada line. Large in terms of square miles, but with a relatively small population. There were no towns of any size, and only one or two with more than five thousand inhabitants.

Not much of a lead without additional information. “Older but not ancient” and the speech impediment indicated he might not be the same mole-cheeked man who’d been asking Spook’s whereabouts among the homeless along lower Potrero. Which meant what, if that were the case? Two men looking for Spook for different reasons, or for the same reason independently? Or was there some sort of connection between the two?