I sat on the bike for a moment, studying the lush environment. A lovely place to live and work, if you had the money. A small animal vibrated in my front pocket, and when I retrieved the phone, Marsh’s mellifluous voice greeted me with his usual panache.
“Your girl likes art.”
“Hello, Marsh.”
“Portia has started restoring some files, and there are an awful lot that have to do with art and its attendant cornucopia.”
I’d given Johnnie’s computer to Marsh to see what could be recovered. Portia was Marsh’s best computer mind. She used to be a hacker. Some would say she still is but receives a regular handsome check for it now. From what I could tell, her skill was extraordinary. Still, her name bothered me. So did her looks. With a name and a body like hers, she should be leading armies, breaking hearts, or slaying dragons—not playing with code. Maybe she did all those other things in her spare time.
“I believe you’re taking liberties with that word.”
“What word.”
“The corn word.”
“Nevertheless, she was deeply passionate about the art world.”
“That’s what she sold. It was her trade, I guess, more or less.” Although it was becoming clear that that really wasn’t the truth.
“More, I’d say. She didn’t just sell it. It was more important to her than that.”
Whatever that meant, I decided I could wait to find out. “What else has Portia found?”
“Nothing remarkable, but she’s still looking. When she finishes the full restoration, there may be more.”
“Good. Let me know.”
He hung up without saying goodbye.
I dismounted my electric steed and marched toward my appointment with the urologist. Most men would be quite nervous before confronting another man about ED, but I was cool, calm, and seriously collected.
I sat in an examination office wondering why I’d chosen ED as the malady to confront Dr. Wainright with. Perhaps my choice revealed an unconscious insecurity? Or was it the opposite side of the coin—a blustery machismo that feared nothing, least of all the dreaded ED.
The receptionist, a Ruben-esque middle-aged woman, oozed maternal vibes along with an unmistakable hint of wantonness in the hazel eyes. The nurse, a red-headed recent co-ed who cuffed me for blood pressure, slipped a digital thermometer delicately beneath my tongue, and asked me personal questions while glancing with what I thought was sympathy, but may have been pity, down at my file.
The pair were to ED as anti-venom is to a snake bite.
The good doctor left me twiddling my thumbs for almost twenty minutes. When he entered the room in his white robes and distracted friendliness, I was surprised (despite Maggie’s semi-accurate description) to find a man both younger and more handsome than your average pledger to the Hippocratic oath. Younger than yours truly by several years and prettier than just about anybody outside of Hollywood’s innermost sanctum.
I hadn’t been to a doctor for a decade or more, and my memories of the trade arose primarily from my childhood when the most difficult feat was pretending that shots didn’t bother me in the least. I loved the way Dr. Guadagni, after driving the needle deep into my anterior deltoid muscle, would tousle my hair, smile, glance at my mom, and say in that deep, doctorly voice, “He’s a brave one,” while I struggled not to grab my aching shoulder and cry out for my mommy.
So perhaps I can be forgiven for not knowing how best to conduct a dialogue with a medical professional.
“Mr...Plank?” he said, studying the clipboard dangling on his lap.
“Max,” I said.
“So what brings you here today?”
A nice opening on his part. Let the patient do the heavy lifting. Speaking the words out loud might be the beginning of treatment. Should I say the words themselves, I can’t get it up, or use the acronym, ED, to shorten the shame?
I decided on a wholly different tack.
“What can you tell me about Johnnie Damon?”
A long silence. I let it build.
Finally, a delayed and not-too-imaginative riposte. “What did you say?”
“Johnnie Damon. Twenty-two-year-old woman. Brown hair. Quite attractive. Lives with her little sister on Church Street across from Mission Dolores Park.”
He looked into my eyes for a few seconds, and in that brief time, I saw his life flash before me. I knew just about everything I needed to, but not quite.
He dropped his gaze down to the clipboard where it stayed.
“Who are you?” he mumbled, without looking up.
“A friend of the little girl, Frankie. Maybe I can jog your memory a bit. You were at Johnnie and Frankie’s house a couple of weeks ago. You talked to one of the landlords, Maggie. She remembers you and your car clearly. She said you were looking for Johnnie, that you were distressed about her disappearance.”
The doctor took a long breath through his nose and looked into my eyes. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“True. But I don’t see why you wouldn’t. A little girl has lost her sister, the only family she has. If you have any information at all, why wouldn’t you want to help?”
He grimaced, paused, his features softening a bit. “It’s not that I...I don’t know anything. She was a patient. I don’t know where she is and—”
“Hold on, Doc. Was she your patient? I don’t know much about medicine and how it’s practiced, but don’t urologists deal with men’s problems?”
He blinked three times. “I can’t discuss her case.”
I decided to let that go, even though it made no sense. “So you’re in the habit of visiting patients at home on the spur of the moment?”
“We’re finished,” he said and stood up. “I guess you lied about your problem, so I’m going to ask you to leave right now and never come back.”
I rose and got up close and personal with him. “Doctor, I know you were involved with her. If she was your patient, that isn’t all she was to you. She’s a missing person, and the police are going to be on the case soon. I’m going to be mentioning your name to them. And they’re going to come see you. You might save yourself a lot of trouble if you just tell me what you know right now.”
He took an awkward step back. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call...” His voice trailed off.
I turned away, opened the exam room door, and said over my shoulder, “I’ll be seeing you real soon, Doc.”
Twenty-One
Bo sat across from me in the bustling kitchen with a stunned expression on his face.
“You could at least thank me,” I said.
“Something’s fishy.” Bo shook his head in wonder.
“Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, my friend.”
“Don’t mix metaphors, and what the hell does that mean, anyway?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I still can’t believe he lowered my rent ten percent. You suggested it. You must have known something. But what could you have on Poe that would make him do something so out of character for him, or any other landlord I’ve had the misfortune to encounter?”
I gave him an open-handed gesture, indicating my own cluelessness. I’d proposed it as a lark during our meeting at the casino and was as shocked as Bo that Poe had actually remembered and agreed to the request. Business at the restaurant was down a bit, but nothing that couldn’t be explained by seasonal variations and the economy.
The unfathomable mysteries of Poe.
“Is he still in your office?”
Bo, still a little dazed, nodded. “He’s only got one Neanderthal with him. He’s expecting my return.”
I rose and clapped Bo on the shoulder and said, “Thanks.”
“Thanks to you, too, I guess. Although I’m not going to be surprised if this ‘favor’ comes back to haunt me. I can’t imagine there won’t be strings attached.”
“O ye of little faith,” I said and left him there to marvel at the perplexity of life itself.
Poe sat huddled on the leather couch with my friend Rex, he of the visage only a mother could love, across from Bo’s desk in the small, cluttered office. Several guitars were propped against the walls, which were lined with lots of black and white photos of San Francisco’s music clubs and halls over the years.
Both Poe and Rex had iPads on their laps.
When I walked in, Poe looked up but displayed no overt surprise. At the same moment, Rex jumped to his feet and reached into his coat pocket. Poe stayed him with a raised hand. “Leave us alone. Stay close.”
Rex shot me a less-than-fond expression but obeyed his boss, and five seconds later, Poe and I were alone together again. He wore his usual white shirt and black vest, sans sports coat.
“I thought I made it clear, Plank, I don’t like surprise visits.” His tone was measured, but you couldn’t miss the hint of aggravation.
“I guess you won’t buy that I was just visiting my friend, Bo, and he mentioned that you’d dropped by, and I thought it would be rude to leave without at least saying hello?”
He chuckled. It seemed a genuine chuckle, and once again, I thanked my lucky stars for my gift of amusing people. It is sometimes confused with annoying people, but you can’t please everyone all the time.
“What do you want?” he said when he somehow quickly recovered from his mirth.
I leaned my butt back against Bo’s desk and folded my arms across my chest. “I’m still trying to help the little girl, and it’s been frustrating. Have you thought of anything else about Johnnie or the Blue Notes, or anything related that might help?”
Poe closed the lid on his iPad and laid it beside him, putting his hands together with his forefingers extended and touching his lips in a pensive motion. “I would have contacted you if there was anything to tell.”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “Have you ever heard of a small time dealer by the name of Leonard Mackey?”
“Frankie and Johnnie’s landlord, you mean?”
I was surprised, although I shouldn’t have been, that he knew that little fact. “One and the same. I think he and his wife, Maggie, sell drugs and possibly more, to a local clientele. Strictly sleazy and small-time, from the looks of them.”
Poe’s tapped his fingers against his lips. Music, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Winter, wafted into the room from someone’s radio in the nearby kitchen. “He sells pot mostly, although when he can get his hands on crack or heroin or Oxy, he’s not above taking that to the street.”
“Women, too?” I asked.
Poe’s eyebrows raised. Then he broke into a mischievous grin, and I knew what was coming. “To be thoroughly conversant with a man’s heart is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair.”
I smiled back at him. “Is that a yes via Edgar Allan?”
Poe re-steepled his fingers and said, “Let’s just say that our Leonard dabbles in whatever trade will make his pockets jangle.”
“Have you had dealings with him?”
Poe looked at me for a long time before answering. “This does not leave the room.”
He waited until I nodded my assent.
“Art and Rex paid him a visit a few months back. Leonard was...” he reached behind his head and scratched his neck reflectively, “...getting involved in matters that were likely to get him into trouble.”
“Involving Johnnie?”
“Obliquely.”
“C’mon. Give me something.”
“He’d somehow become cognizant of the fact that a certain local politician was involved in a potential conflict of interest, a brewing scandal, and he was concocting a blackmail scheme. Fortunately, he mentioned it to one of his drinking buddies, a contact of one of my associates, and we were able to nip it in the bud. For his own good, really, the man is not smart enough to pull off something like that.”
“And how does Johnnie factor into this?”
“As I said, not directly. Just that Leonard was her landlord. That’s about it.”
That’s about it.
Sure.
“Did your men rough him up?”
“They just talked to him, told him how inadvisable his plan was.”
I’m sure they were a model of decorum. “And so he just dropped it?”
“Yes.”
“No muss. No fuss.”
“Something like that.”
“I guess you’re not going to tell me anything more about the politician or the scandal.”
“Did I say scandal?”
“I must have misunderstood you.”
“Yes, you must have.”
“What else? How about the Blue Notes? Two of them bilked Johnnie out of some money. I guess they were doing street deals with her. I don’t know what they were involved with. Frankie thinks her sister was peddling art to them wholesale, but they deny that. They say it was painkillers and the like. I think they’re—at least the one I talked to—probably telling me the truth. But I can’t be sure, and Johnnie isn’t here to defend herself. Would you be able to exert any influence that might clarify what she was doing with these guys?”
Poe shook his head. “No.”
“That’s it?”
He glanced at the Rolex on his wrist, losing patience.
“One more question.”
He sighed loudly, but I continued. “Do you know anything about a doctor by the name of Wainright? Operates out of Piedmont. A urologist.”
“Never have had a need for that kind of service,” he said flatly.
“And you know nothing about the man?”
He gave me an even look. “Why do you ask?”
“He was involved with Johnnie, too.”
Poe’s face remained noncommittal.
“I don’t know exactly how yet, but I will. Something was going on between them. Whether it was intimacy or business, I don’t know yet.”
“Wainright, you say?”
I nodded.
The tip of his tongue peeked out between his teeth. “I can’t help you.”
“Okay. Thanks for your time and sorry for the interruption.”
“Much as I enjoy these little chats, I hope this is the last time you surprise me.”
I moved toward the door, but then turned back and said, “Why’d you lower Bo’s rent?”
He smiled. “I’m not such a hard-hearted businessman. I want people to succeed. He’s got a nice little place here. I like his food. If by giving up a little now, he can stay in business longer, and the people—” he waved his hand at an imaginary crowd of famished patrons, “—get the benefits of a fine restaurateur, then that’s all to the good. No need to squeeze every last penny from good people.”
I nodded and turned away, almost believing that he was sincere. Maybe he was, but I had a feeling, like Bo, that any favor now would inevitably lead to the future extraction of the proverbial pound of flesh.
Twenty-Two
I’d never seen Portia wearing makeup, or dressed in the slightest bit of finery, or with her hair done in any remotely fashionable way.
She wore a black t-shirt and jeans. Both fit her body like handmade gloves. Her barely brushed blonde hair hung straight down to her shoulders. A half-dozen rings of varying sizes and patterns dangled from her voluptuous ears. I was sure there were more piercings hidden from view.
It didn’t matter. She was a natural beauty with olive skin, big oval eyes, and an intensity of gaze that could weaken a strong man’s knees.
I’m not mentioning names.
She had Johnnie’s laptop open on the table in front of us and was explaining the various files she’d recovered.
We were on the third and top floor of Marsh’s offices in Tiburon with its stunning views of Angel Island and the San Francisco skyline in the distance.
I’d driven across the Golden Gate because that’s where Portia was and because it looked like I had another man, another possible suspect, to see in Sausalito. The more I found out about Johnnie, the wider and more tangled the web
of mystery surrounding her seemed to get.
Portia had already shown me all the files and bookmarked sites and thousands of photos of artwork that Johnnie maintained. Most poignant was a file containing her resume and the many rejection slips she’d received from local art galleries where she’d applied for jobs. She had a decently written essay that emphasized her passion and knowledge about art and art history, but I noted that she was a high school dropout and figured that’s why she couldn’t get to first base with gallery owners.
The information on her computer made it clear that, whether she peddled art on the street or not, her love of it was unquestionable. She wrote about it in a diary she kept on her computer. She wrote with passion about her favorite artists and pieces with a sincerity and emotion that were almost too raw. It felt like a violation to be reading her private notes, and I didn’t linger there.
“After reading this, I like her,” Portia said. “Sure hope she’s okay. I’d like to give her back her computer, face to face, maybe take her out for a cup of joe and a chat.”
I nodded. “She was definitely crazy about art.”
I thought about how this fit with the other people and aspects of the case but couldn’t come to any particular conclusion.
“So where are the files that mention the doctor and the politician?”
She clicked the mouse and a folder labeled “Persistence of Memory” opened up. “She labeled this after a painting by Salvador Dali. I guess it’s pretty famous,” Portia said, glancing at me. She clicked again and a file opened with the painting. I hadn’t known its title, but the painting was familiar. It is a surreal depiction of time with several melting pocket watches and a modern, bland, but strangely evocative seascape.
I stared at it for a moment, wondering what it had to do with Dr. Wainright and the politician.
Portia clicked on another file, and it opened a Word doc with half a page of notes. Stephen Wainright was printed at the top.
I scanned down the page, trying to make sense of the letters and numbers printed there. The information appeared to be in an improvised shorthand or code.
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