Spook

2

The phone rang at ten till five, just as I was getting ready to close up shop for the weekend. Tamara was already gone, and I’d been finishing a report on a claims investigation for Western States Indemnity and trying to decide if I should fight the Friday night crowds downtown for a couple of hours of Christmas shopping, or wait until tomorrow and fight the Saturday morning crowds. Tonight might be better, I was thinking, get it over with. It was Kerry’s night to pick up Emily and they wouldn’t be home until seven o’clock at the latest.

The caller identified himself as Steve Taradash, adding that he was the owner of a company called Visuals, Inc. He’d gotten the agency name out of the phone book, he said, and wanted to know if I was available to “do a small job” for him. He sounded uncertain, possibly a little embarrassed at asking for the services of a detective agency.

“What sort of job, Mr. Taradash?”

“Well, it’s kind of difficult to explain over the phone. Could you come here? We’re not far from where you are.” He gave the address.

“This evening, you mean?”

“If you could manage it. I’ll be here until seven or so.”

“I’ll need some idea of what kind of job you want done first.”

“Find out who somebody is. Was.”

“I’m not sure what you mean. An identity check?”

“Well, there was an article about it in Wednesday’s Chronicle. It mentioned us — Visuals, Inc. Maybe you saw it?”

As a general rule I neither read the newspapers nor watch TV news. Investigative work is depressing enough, and I can count on Kerry or Tamara or various clients to keep me abreast of current events. I didn’t tell Taradash this; I said only, “I’m afraid not.”

“Oh. Well.” He made a throat-clearing sound. “The thing is,” he said, “I’ve been stewing about this ever since Tuesday morning. Whether to call somebody or not. I kept hoping the cops... police would ID him, turn up some information on his background, but they don’t have a clue. He’s still a John Doe.”

“Who is?”

“Spook.”

“Did you say Spook?”

“That’s what everybody called him.” The throat-clearing sound again. “Look, I’m not very good at this kind of thing, especially on the phone. I’ve never hired a detective before. Could you come over? Even if there’s nothing you can do, I’ll pay you for your time...”

Five o’clock. Friday evening crowds, Friday evening traffic snarls downtown. Two hours before Kerry and Emily would be home. Visuals, Inc. was more or less on my way to Diamond Heights. And I wouldn’t be officially semiretired until after the first of the year.

“Give me half an hour, Mr. Taradash,” I said. “I’ll let you have the same, free of charge.”

Visuals, Inc. occupied half of a converted warehouse on Mariposa, off lower Potrero. The area was semi-industrial, home to all sorts of small businesses, the Municipal Railway bus yards, and the local PBS station, among other things. It was close to downtown, close to the interchange of Highways 101 and 80, close to the Mission District, Pac Bell Park, S.F. General Hospital.

The centralized location may or may not have much to do with the fact that a fairly high concentration of the city’s 8,000-plus homeless population congregates there. The area has a soup kitchen and at least one city-operated shelter, but many of the displaced live on the streets or sleep in squalid little encampments under the freeways and in neighborhood parks such as Franklin Square. Sidewalks, alleys, doorways are littered with shopping carts, refuse, human waste. Conditions aren’t as bad as in some other parts of the city, but walking here can be a depressing experience. And I had to hoof it three blocks in a chilly December dusk because street parking is always at a premium, even after five o’clock on a Friday evening. I doled out change to three panhandlers along the way, turned down a fourth because he was drunk on cheap wine and overly aggressive. Life in the city in the new millennium.

The windowless entrance to Visuals, Inc. was locked tight. Plated on the door was a discreet sign with the company’s name and nothing else; a bell button was set into the wall next to it, above which another, card-size sign said RING FOR ADMITTANCE. I rang, waited a good two minutes before a voice said, “Yes, who is it?” When I identified myself, chains and bolts rattled and the door opened and I was looking at a guy in his mid-thirties with a severe case of male-pattern baldness and a tic under his right eye that made it seem as if he were winking.

“Steve Taradash,” he said. He grabbed my hand, worked it like a slot-machine handle for about three seconds before he let go. “Come in, thanks for coming, I really appreciate it, we’ll talk in my office.” All run together like that. Nervous guy.

He led me on a fast walk through an areaway into a cavernous space lighted by both spots and fluorescents. Two-thirds of the space contained film-related equipment: cameras, dollies, boom microphones, a variety of wheeled backdrops and a gaggle of furniture and props. The other third was walled off and had two sets of metal doors, above one of which was mounted a presently unlit red light. Sound stage, I thought. Two men were working among the equipment; they paid no attention to us as we passed along the side wall.

At the far end was another closed off section, this one cut up into windowed offices. Two were dark and curtained; the third and largest showed lamplight. That was where we went — Taradash’s office. Big, cluttered, evidently soundproofed, and outfitted with a computer, a film projector, another large machine I couldn’t identify. The three solid walls were coated with posters, photographs, film stills, and various award certificates, some framed, some fastened to corkboards with pushpins.

Taradash said, “Sit anywhere you can find space,” and flopped into a leather desk chair. Two of the other three chairs in there were piled high with miscellaneous stuff. I moved a couple of large cans of film off the third to make room for my hind end.

“What sort of film work do you do, Mr. Taradash?”

He took a cigarette from a pack on the desk blotter. If he’d started to light it, I would have protested; but he didn’t. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, looking at it with an expression of loathing. “What we are for the most part is an industry supplier,” he said. “Rent out equipment to small outfits that can’t afford to buy or transport their own — documentary filmmakers, production companies that make indy flicks or commercials. We provide other services, too — sets and a sound stage for indoor shots, film processing, transportation.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“It can be. Profitable, too — finally. We’ve been in business seven years, this last one was our best so far and the projection for next year looks even better. You’d be amazed at how much film is shot in the Bay Area, not just the city but within a radius of a couple hundred miles. As much as in L.A., no kidding.”

“I believe it,” I said.

“Up to my ass in work even this time of year.” He blew his breath out, scowled at the cigarette, set it down on the blotter. “Trying to quit,” he said. “Bad time to do it, probably, holidays and my workload combined, but I can’t take the wheezing and morning cough anymore.”

“I know how it is. I used to be a heavy smoker myself.”

“You have a hard time quitting?”

“Not really. Cancer scare.”

The tic jumped under his eye. “Scares me, too. That, and emphysema. My old man died of emphysema. How’d you do it? Quit, I mean.”

“Just gave it up. Cold turkey.”

“I can’t do that,” Taradash said ruefully. “I tried, a dozen times at least. Patches, inhalers, that gum that releases a chemical makes you sick when you smoke... all the damn tricks and none of ’em worked. I’m trying something new this time.”

No wonder he was nervous. “New product?”

“No. I’ll show you.” He produced a penknife from a desk drawer, used the blade to slice the paper lengthwise on the weed in front of him. Then he lopped off the filter, cut the paper and tobacco into little wedges until he had a shredded mess in front of him. He seemed to enjoy doing it; his expression was one of almost unholy glee when he was done. He swept the mess into an ashtray, emptied the tray into his wastebasket. “I do that every time the craving gets too strong — twenty or thirty times a day. Wastes money, but what the hell, I waste it when I’m smoking the goddamn things, right? So far it seems to be doing the job.”

“How long now?”

“Five days and counting.” He grinned suddenly; it transformed his features, made him look boyish. “Each time I pretend I’m slice-and-dicing one of the tobacco company execs or their frigging lawyers. Very satisfying.”

I said I guessed it must be. “About your reason for wanting to hire my agency, Mr. Taradash...”

“Spook, right.” He shifted through papers, found a clipping and slid it over my way. “The newspaper article I mentioned on the phone, that’ll give you some of the background.”

The clipping was headed DEATH AND ANONYMITY ON THE STREETS. I smiled a little, wryly, when I saw the byline: Joseph DeFalco. My old pal Joe, one of the last of the old-school yellow journalism hacks. Typically, this story of his was a mixture of straight news reportage, sob feature, and soapbox rhetoric, loaded with bathos and flamboyant metaphor DeFalco’s “personal style” which in fact was loosely patterned on those of Mike Royko and Jimmy Breslin.

Distilled, the facts amounted to these: On Tuesday morning a homeless man in his mid-thirties, known only by the name Spook, had been found shot to death by an employee of Visuals, Inc. in one of their back-alley doorways. He carried no identification, no one seemed to know his real name, and a check of his fingerprints had turned up no match in any state or federal database. Officially he was a John Doe, the latest of more than a hundred and forty John and Jane Does to pass through the medical examiner’s office this year.

There was no apparent motive for the shooting. Everyone seemed to agree that he’d been a harmless street person, mentally ill like many of the city’s homeless — known as Spook because he had ghosts living inside his head with whom he held regular conversations — but gentle, friendly, nonaggressive. Steve Taradash and his dozen employees had befriended Spook, given him small amounts of money, food, nonalcoholic drinks. One of the employees, a woman named Meg Lawton, described him as “a really sweet man who’d bring us presents sometimes, flowers and little things of no value. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. I just don’t understand why anyone would want to kill him.”

When I returned the clipping, Taradash said, “You see that part about how many John and Jane Does died in the city this year? How their ashes get scattered if they’re not identified?”

“I saw it.”

“That’s the part really gets me, can’t get it out of my head. A man dies and nobody knows his name, who he was, if he was always unbalanced or something made him that way. Scatter his ashes off the Golden Gate and that’s it, like he never existed at all. You understand what I mean?”

“All too well,” I said.

“Just another crazy street guy. Who cares, right? Well, I do. My people do. We knew him, liked him... ah, Christ. I’d really like to know who he was. Contact his people, if he had any. If he didn’t... maybe arrange for his burial myself.” Taradash dragged another cigarette out of the pack, stared at it the way he had at the other one. The tic was working again. “That sound off-the-wall to you?”

“Not at all. It sounds decent, humanitarian.”

“Yeah, well, I can afford to be humanitarian. I’ve made mine and poor bastards like Spook... well, you know how it is. The haves and the have nots.” He went to work with his penknife again. “Besides,” he said, “it’s the season, almost Christmas. I always feel sentimental, this time of year.”

“Too bad more people don’t share your feelings.”

“Yeah.” The knife point bit deep into his blotter, scoring it. “How long will they keep the body on ice before it’s cremated? Thirty days, isn’t it?”

“Usually, in a homicide case.”

“Two weeks till Christmas. You think you could find out who Spook was, something about him, in two weeks?”

“Depends on what kind of leads we can turn up. We’ve had identity cases that were wrapped up in a few hours, others that couldn’t be cleared in two months.”

“How much do you charge?”

I gave him the daily rate and the weekly rate, and added the usual “plus expenses.” The numbers didn’t faze him; he kept right on dismembering the weed.

“So would you be willing to take it on?” he said. “Two weeks, max?”

“Just an identity search? You’re not asking for an investigation into the murder?”

“Would that be an extra charge?”

“No. But it might not be do-able. The SFPD doesn’t like private investigators mixing into homicide cases. Even if I could get clearance, the odds are I wouldn’t be able to find out anything more than they have.”

“They can’t be making much of an effort. I mean, Spook was just another street crazy to them. And they have a lousy track record with violent crimes anyway. That series in the Chronicle a while back... the SFPD doesn’t exactly inspire confidence these days.”

I’d seen those articles, courtesy of Kerry and Tamara. They were the result of a seven-month newspaper investigation into the SFPD and contained some eye-opening statistics: just 28 % of serious felonies committed here between 1996 and 2000 solved, the lowest percentage of any large city in the country; only half of all homicide cases cleared; close to 70 percent of robberies and serious assaults not actively investigated by an inspector. The department claimed it was emphasizing crime suppression over crime solution, and I was aware of extenuating circumstances not covered in the paper’s expose and that efforts had been made since to improve performance, but the statistics were disturbing nonetheless. As Taradash had said, they didn’t exactly inspire confidence, even in an ex-cop and pro-police citizen like me.

I said, “You have a point, Mr. Taradash. But the police still have resources I can’t match.”

“So I guess we’ll never know who did the shooting.”

“If no clear-cut motive emerges, probably not. I take it you have no idea who might have done it, or why?”

“Not a clue. A guy like Spook...” He shrugged and wagged his head.

“Did he own anything of value?”

“God, no. His clothes were filthy, little better than rags. He never had any money except for what we gave him and what little he could panhandle.”

“No trouble or friction with anyone here?”

“My people? Absolutely not. He got along with everybody, we practically adopted the poor bugger.”

“Any of your employees spend more time with him than others?”

“Meg Lawton, she’s my accountant. She was always talking to him, giving him spare change, feeding him. When he first showed up around here, she caught him taking a leak on the wall next to the loading dock, yelled at him for it. He didn’t yell back, like most of them. Told her he was sorry, he’d never do it again, and he never did as far as we know. Next day he brought her a little bunch of flowers that he got somewhere. That’s what started us looking out for him, him bringing Meg those flowers.”

“When was that, when he first showed up?”

“About six months ago.”

“Never saw him in the neighborhood before that?”

“No, never.”

“He spend time with any or the other homeless?”

“I don’t think so. Pretty much a loner.” Taradash finished slaughtering his second cigarette, this one more finely chopped than the first, and dumped the remains into his wastebasket. For a time, then, he looked out into the warehouse. The two workers had disappeared; there was nothing to see out there but stationary objects draped in light and shadow. “Well,” he said at length, “there was one guy I saw him with, once. Cold, rainy day and they were sharing a bottle of sweet wine when I came in to work.”

“How long ago?”

“Couple of weeks, maybe longer. Right around Thanksgiving.”

“Do you know the other man’s name?”

“Never saw him before or since.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Big, heavier than Spook, three or four inches taller. Dark. Not a black man, but dark. Wore a ratty red and green wool cap pulled down over his ears. That’s all I remember.”

“Did Spook ever say anything about himself, where he grew up, where he lived before he showed up here — anything at all that might help?”

“No. Nothing.”

“What did he talk about, aside from begging money and food?”

“He didn’t beg money or food,” Taradash said, “that’s the thing. He never panhandled any of us, we always volunteered. As to what he said... most of it sounded like gibberish to me. Particularly when he was talking to those ghosts of his. Truth is, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Only one who did was Meg.”

“They have names, his ghosts?”

“If they did, I don’t remember what they were. Meg might be able to tell you.”

We’d covered enough ground for now. I’d brought a blank agency contract with me and we got it filled in and signed, and Taradash wrote out a retainer check for three days’ work. He said then, “How soon can you start on this?”

“Monday morning, first thing.”

“Not tomorrow? I know it’s Saturday, but we’ve got a local commercial scheduled to shoot and I’ll be here most of the day. So will Meg and some of my other people.”

“Well...”

“I don’t mind paying extra, if you could manage it.”

“That wouldn’t be necessary.” I thought it over. Christmas shopping wouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours in the morning, and the family outing we had scheduled to pick out a tree wasn’t until Sunday. Another couple of hours on the job wouldn’t cut too deep into the rest of tomorrow. “I suppose I could stop by,” I said. Old Easy Touch. “Say around noon or so.”

“I’d really appreciate it,” Taradash said. “You don’t need to call first, just show up.”

He walked me out to the front entrance, shook my hand again with even more enthusiasm. “This takes a load off my mind, I want you to know that. Or maybe I mean eases my conscience. Just being able to do something, no matter how it turns out.”

I said I knew how he felt. Just being able to do something is a major reason I’ve stayed in this business as long as I have. For a man like me it’s one of the job’s few nonmonetary perks.