Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  I set the wheels rolling on a credit check on Sam Raynor, then I made several cold calls to local banks. I pretended to have a check for several thousand dollars from Raynor and asked the teller if it would clear. The method was time-consuming but sometimes effective. But this time I came up with nothing, more and more convinced that Raynor had hidden his money with someone else so it couldn’t be traced to his name.

  My contact at the Department of Motor Vehicles agreed to run a check on Raynor’s partial license plate number, though he grumbled, as always, and warned that it would take several days. Right now it appeared that my best shot for locating Sam Raynor’s residence was by tailing him. I could latch onto him when he visited his attorney. If, as Blair Castle mentioned, the Raynors had a divorce hearing scheduled in three weeks, I hoped Raynor would pay a call on his lawyer soon. Given the working hours at the air station, I figured Raynor for a late afternoon appointment. That meant staking out the lawyer’s office for a few days, until I spotted the redhead who drove a red Trans-Am.

  I spent the rest of the morning at the Alameda County Courthouse, doing research for another case. That done, I walked the six blocks back to my building and bought a turkey sandwich at a nearby deli before climbing the stairs to my office. I managed to eat the whole thing without interruption. Then I switched on the computer and, using the information garnered from my morning’s research at the courthouse, wrote a report for my client. He lived up north, near Clear Lake, so I faxed it to him. I’m having lots of fun with my new toy, I thought, watching the sheets feed into the machine. My next scheduled big purchase is a copier. At present I’m using the one at the law firm next door, not always convenient.

  At twelve-thirty I locked the office and headed for Treasure Island to keep my appointment with Duffy LeBard. After handing my cash to the toll taker at the eastern end of the Bay Bridge, I drove up the long rise to the upper deck of the bridge’s cantilevered section, staying in the far left lane. I took the exit leading to Yerba Buena Island, where the road wound to the left around the rocky tree-covered cone, until a picture postcard vista of San Francisco came into view, the Ferry Building in sharp focus on the city’s waterfront. The road led down to a short level causeway, and I arrived at the gate of Treasure Island, shortly before one o’clock.

  While Yerba Buena is a natural island, its close neighbor is man-made, a flat expanse of landfill dredged from the bay in the late thirties. Treasure Island was the site for the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition, which many folks remember with a warm glow of nostalgia. After the fair closed, the island was supposed to be the site for San Francisco’s airport, but World War II intervened. The Navy covered the island with housing, offices, and warehouses. Some of the structures and statues built for the fair still survive, notably the base’s administration building, which faces San Francisco; its curved facade looks like some 1930s Art Deco version of an airport terminal. Whenever I see it, I get the urge to take the Clipper to Manila.

  At the gate I gave my name to a scrawny young Marine. He checked his clipboard and gave me directions to the base police office, where I cooled my heels for a few minutes because Chief LeBard was on the phone. I sat on a hard plastic chair and waited, reading a recent issue of Navy Times, its lead story detailing the Navy’s well-publicized problems with sexual harassment. Finally I heard a baritone voice with a slow drawl redolent of jambalaya and dirty rice. “Miz Howard? I’m Chief LeBard.”

  I stood and faced him. He was a big man, at least six-foot-three, with wide shoulders, long legs, a deep chest, and just a hint of belly at the waist of his sharply-tailored khaki uniform. He had the kind of Southern bad boy sensuality I associated with Elvis or Jerry Lee, and I could easily imagine him with his wavy black hair combed into a pompadour, his wide-lipped mouth crooning a ballad into a microphone. There were silver threads in the black, and I guessed his age at about forty.

  As he shut the door to his office and waved me toward a chair, Duffy LeBard looked me over, heavy-lidded brown eyes curtained by long black lashes, and smiled. “Would you like some coffee, Miz Howard?”

  “I’ll bet it’s got chicory in it,” I said, placing his accent as I returned his smile.

  “You’d be right” He raised one thick eyebrow. “You like chicory in your coffee?”

  “Every now and then I give it a try.” I waited while he crossed his small office to a table and picked up a coffeepot. Then he turned and handed me a dark blue ceramic mug.

  “Cream or sugar?” he inquired.

  I shook my head and sat down in the chair in front of his desk, sipping the steaming black brew. “Now that’s a real wake-up call,” I said, as caffeine and chicory hit me full bore.

  LeBard laughed and settled into his own chair, a battered wooden number that creaked with his weight. He raised his own mug to his lips and I noted the absence of rings on both hands.

  “Where are you from, Chief?”

  “Oh, down around Baton Rouge,” he said, giving his pronunciation of the Louisiana capital a decidedly French twist.

  “You must have hit the Gingerbread House your first week in the Bay Area,” I said, mentioning a popular Oakland restaurant famed for its Cajun and Creole cuisine.

  “Day I got off the plane. And about once a month ever since. Now, they do make a good pot of red beans and rice, but so do I. And I truly believe mine is better.” He made the words sound like an invitation to a taste test. The man was flirting with me, and I was enjoying every minute of it.

  Then his manner turned crisp and businesslike. “I have an acquaintance over at the Oakland Police Department,” he said, setting his mug on his desk. “He says you’ve got a pretty good reputation as a private investigator. I also called Ed Korsakov up at Whidbey Island. He told me why you’re asking questions.”

  “Are you going to give me any answers?”

  “Ordinarily I wouldn’t.” LeBard took a swallow of coffee, set the mug on his desk blotter and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve got no business getting involved in domestic matters. As a Navy man and a police officer, I’m restricted by certain rules and regulations.”

  I sipped the coffee and considered the chief’s disclaimers. “If you’re not going to give me any answers, why did you keep the appointment?”

  “Sam Raynor,” LeBard said, his voice as close to ice as it would ever get. “He’s a real piece of work.”

  “So people tell me. I haven’t met him.”

  “You don’t want to. I’ve met cottonmouths and alligators I like better. And trust more.”

  “What else can you tell me about Sam Raynor?”

  Chief LeBard didn’t answer my question. Instead he asked one of his own. “You know anything about Guam, Miz Howard?”

  I shrugged, pulling together the few facts I knew from school and from talking to Alex, who had been stationed there. “Guam’s in Micronesia, the largest island in the Marianas chain. Its history is similar to the Philippines. Both were Spanish possessions for about three hundred years, both acquired by the U.S. during the Spanish-American War. Guam’s still American territory, though, with a representative in Congress. Other than some islands off the coast of Alaska, Guam was the only American soil occupied by the Japanese during World War Two.”

  LeBard nodded. “The Japanese treated the population pretty rough, even executed a priest. A lot of the old folks who remember the war don’t look too kindly on the Japanese tourists who fly down for vacation. It’s only three hours by air from Tokyo to Guam, a little farther to Manila. A lot of history out there on those islands. When the Yanks took Guam and Saipan in ’forty-four, those were bloody battles. And of course Tinian is where the Enola Gay took off, headed for Hiroshima. Seems like every time they dig a trench in downtown Agana, they find unexploded ordnance from the war, and have to call the Navy to defuse the damn things. A Japanese straggler turned up back in ’seventy-two, if you can imagine that. It’s a real small island, about thirty-five miles long, a figure-eight tilted to one side.
” He traced the island’s shape in the air. “Maybe four miles wide at the narrowest point, eight miles at the widest. Takes all of three hours to drive around it. But down at the southern part there’s mountains and thick jungle, with only trails leading in. So I guess a Japanese straggler hiding until the seventies isn’t that surprising.”

  “Is the history and geography lesson leading somewhere, Chief?” I asked, sipping coffee.

  LeBard picked up his mug and smiled at me over the rim. “In due time, Miz Howard, in due time. A lot of military people like Guam, enough to retire over there. Pleasant climate, right above the equator, and two seasons, wet and dry, though you have to worry about the occasional typhoon. Very American, yet just a little bit foreign. When I did my first tour over there, about fifteen years ago, my sea daddy, this old chief who’d been in the Navy since Moses was an altar boy, said to me, ‘Duffy, you gonna find out what it’s like to be in a minority.’ And he was right.”

  “So Guam is American, yet not American.”

  “Plagued by the same problems we have stateside. Only Guam’s a lot closer to the source.”

  “The source being the Golden Triangle,” I said.

  LeBard nodded. “Just a short hop from Agana to Manila, Hong Kong or Bangkok. A lot of sailors come back from those trips toting a few things they weren’t carrying when they left. Sam Raynor was one of them. I’ll bet that’s where he got that money he’s so interested in hiding from his wife.”

  “You’re telling me Raynor was smuggling drugs into Guam?”

  “Drugs, and anything else he could carry onto a plane,” LeBard said. “I never could prove it. I was an investigator with the Armed Forces Police Detachment, and we worked with the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Guam Department of Public Safety. The stuff was coming in on a regular schedule. The local drug kingpin used tourists and sailors as mules. I think Raynor was a mule, selling stuff on the side. He took a lot of vacations to those cities I mentioned, particularly Bangkok. He always seemed to be flush when it came to money. And there always seemed to be a lot of heroin floating around town when he got back. I got close a couple of times, but I never could catch the son of a bitch red-handed.”

  LeBard balled his right hand into a fist and punched the flat of his left hand several times. I could feel his frustration across the space that separated us. He’d switched from we to I. His feelings about Sam Raynor were personal.

  “Raynor’s smart and slick. He walked a fine line, keeping his nose clean enough not to aggravate the locals or the Navy brass. You talk to anyone who worked with him, I’m sure they’d say he was a fine example of a sailor. He’s got a way of charming people. They don’t see past the charm until it’s too late.”

  That must have been how it was for Ruth, I thought, swept off her feet into a marriage with a man who was abusive and dangerous. “What’s under the charm?” I asked LeBard.

  “The man’s a sociopath.” The chief frowned, resting his fist on his desk blotter. “Raynor knew about our investigation, back on Guam. He knew I was on his trail. I could tell that by the way he’d look at me when we happened to meet. It was a ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ look. Only I never could. If Sam Raynor’s involved in something illegal back here, I’d sure like to nail his ass.”

  “I’m sure you would,” I told him. “But I’m less interested in where he got his money than I am in what he’s done with it. If I uncover any information about Raynor’s illegal activities, I’d certainly pass it along to the appropriate authorities. I would hope that those authorities would reciprocate.”

  “Anything’s possible.” LeBard laced his hands behind his head, leaned back in his creaky wooden chair and surveyed me with his heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Raynor had an account at the Bank of America in Agana. He closed it before he left Guam, before he was served with divorce papers. My job is to find out what he did with that money. Mrs. Raynor’s attorney has subpoenaed the bank’s records, but it’ll take time to get a response. In the course of your investigation on Guam, did you check into Raynor’s finances?”

  “Not really. I knew he had money, and I guessed where he got it. He’d spread it around, buying drinks for his buddies and presents for his string of ladies. Sounds like for all his free spending, Raynor made some regular deposits. After a couple of years he must have had quite a bit of cash stashed away.”

  “Enough to make a difference for Mrs. Raynor and her daughter. You mentioned Raynor’s buddies on Guam. Are any of those people in the Bay Area? I hear it’s a small Navy. You run into the same people at different duty stations. Does Raynor have friends or acquaintances in northern California?”

  Duffy LeBard snorted. “I know of one. Raynor had a running mate on Guam, an obnoxious little squirt named Harlan Pettibone. He tagged after Raynor like a puppy. Now he’s over at the air station in Alameda. Spent a week in the brig, right after he arrived last spring. Harlan’s idea of recreation is to get snot-slinging drunk and fight everyone within range. That’s why he’s still a seaman. Every time he makes rate to petty officer, he gets busted.”

  “That means they take his promotion away from him. I’m surprised he’s still in the Navy.”

  “Harlan’s a good candidate for a bad conduct discharge,” the chief said, his hand reaching for the coffee mug. “It’s just a matter of time. I doubt he’ll make it through his first tour. Except when he’s drinking, Harlan’s harmless. Exactly the kind of hanger-on I’d expect Sam Raynor to have.”

  “Other than Pettibone, can you give me any names?”

  LeBard sipped his coffee, then set down the mug and rubbed one finger across his upper lip, furrowing his high forehead. “Can’t think of anyone else. No, wait. There’s a chief at Alameda who was at the air station on Guam, same time Raynor was. I met him and his wife a couple of weeks ago, at the chiefs’ club here on base. His wife’s an enlisted woman. Yancy, that’s it. Steve and Claudia Yancy. Don’t know whether they knew Raynor.”

  I’d heard the name Yancy before, last night in fact, during my conversation with Alex Tongco. Steve Yancy was the new chief who’d accompanied Alex down to North Island, the one who’d just transferred to Alameda from WestPac.

  “I know Raynor’s working somewhere on NAS Alameda,” I said to LeBard. “Can you tell me which department? I’d also like to know where he lives.”

  “I don’t know how much info I can give you,” LeBard drawled.

  Someone knocked, then a young Navy enlisted woman opened the door and stuck her head in. “Telephone, Chief. It’s the captain.”

  “Thanks.” LeBard straightened in his chair and reached for the phone, resting his hand on the top of the receiver. “I’ve got to take this call. Leave me your card and I’ll be in touch with you. By the way, Miz Howard, if anyone asks, we never had this conversation, and you never sampled any of my coffee with chicory.”

  “Does this mean I don’t get to sample any red beans and rice?” I asked as I placed one of my business cards on his desk blotter. He picked it up and glanced at it before slipping it into his breast pocket.

  “That might be arranged.” He grinned as he lifted the phone receiver.

  Five

  I HEADED BACK ACROSS THE BAY BRIDGE, MY WINDOW rolled down to capture a breeze on this hot afternoon. Far below me the dark blue waters of San Francisco Bay shifted and glimmered. As I drove off the lower deck of the bridge, I saw the giant cranes and stacks of containers at the Port of Oakland, looming to my right. I looked toward Berkeley, at the spire of the campanile on the University of California campus, recalling the antiwar demonstrations of the sixties. Despite the definite local tilt to the left, the military presence permeated the Bay Area, and had for years. Military bases dotted the map, bringing with them people and payrolls, dollars spent at local businesses, and a transient population. Downtown Oakland was bracketed by two freeways, one named for Admiral Chester Nimitz, the other for General Douglas MacArthur. Both names evoked a time when things were more clearly defined, a time long
past.

  I stayed on the MacArthur Freeway until I reached the Fruitvale Avenue exit, in Oakland’s Dimond District. Here was MacArthur again, this time MacArthur Boulevard. I parked outside the office of Sam Raynor’s attorney, but my stakeout was wasted time. I saw no sign of Raynor or his red Trans-Am. At five I went back to my office to check my messages, but there was nothing earthshaking on my machine. I turned on the computer and wrote an account of my meeting with Duffy LeBard. The printer was spitting out the pages when the phone rang.

  On the other end of the receiver, Ruth’s voice sounded cheerful. “Hi, Jeri. I’m at my parents’ house. I was sorting through some things I have stored here, and I found something interesting.”

  “Great.” I reached for a pencil. “What is it?”

  “Can you come over here? I can’t quite describe it over the phone. Besides, Mother would like to see you, and I want you to meet Wendy. And Kevin’s here on leave.”

  I hesitated for just a moment, looking at the round clock on the wall to my left. It was nearly six. I was tired and I wanted to go home. The only member of the family Ruth hadn’t mentioned was her father, but I was sure he was also present. After our clashes last March, I had no desire to see Admiral Franklin again. But I didn’t see how I could avoid it. I was now working for his daughter. Like a couple of ships in a narrow channel, Franklin and I would collide sooner or later.

  Might as well get this out of the way. “Sure. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Alameda is an elongated island running northwest to southeast along the East Bay shore, separated from Oakland by a channel everyone calls the estuary. Driving to Alameda means crossing one of several drawbridges, which in clear sunny weather often raise to allow sailboats to pass, stalling traffic at the approaches. The other alternative is a tunnel that burrows under the estuary. The Tube, as it’s called, is close to downtown Oakland, so I took that route, entering Alameda at its West End. I drove the length of the island to the East End, where the Franklins lived on a tree-lined street called Gibbons Drive. The big Spanish-style house was constructed of beige stucco, topped by a red tile roof. I got out of my car and surveyed the riot of flowers in the beds surrounding the house, testimony to Lenore Franklin’s green thumb and love of digging in the dirt.