by Janet Dawson
“You know the Mercedes was stolen night before last?”
“Yeah.” Genevieve shook her head. “Tiff called here yesterday. She was pissed, at the cops, the insurance company—and you. You were there in the afternoon, asking questions. She had to take BART up here to Oakland last night to get the Subaru, so she’d have something to drive. Good thing Acey hadn’t sold it yet.”
“Tiffany barely had the Mercedes long enough to register it,” I said. “Now the insurance company is going to have to pay off a fairly large sum of money. It doesn’t set right.”
Genevieve stared at me, brown eyebrows raised over her dark eyes. “You think Sam had something to do with stealing the car,” she said. “How do you figure?”
“I haven’t yet. But this whole situation with the missing Mercedes is a little too ripe for my nose. I’ve done some work for insurance adjusters over the years. That means I’ve seen a scam or two. This reminds me of one I encountered a couple of years ago. Let me speculate for a moment.”
I paused, gathered my thoughts. “Raynor has money he wants to hide from his wife, so he doesn’t have to share it as community property. He claims he has nothing except his Navy salary. That’s where I come in, to find the money. I look at Raynor’s friends and see he’s spending a lot on Tiffany. I think he gave her the money to buy that car.”
“I can’t believe she’d go along with it.”
“She would if he’s got her convinced she’s doing him a favor. Sam goes to Tiffany with some song and dance about his horrible wife trying to take everything he’s got. Can he stash some money with Tiffany, in her name, in her bank account? But that might be too obvious, considering everyone knows he’s dating her. So he says, let’s buy this expensive car and put it in your name. That makes it more difficult to trace. Sam buys the car, Tiffany registers and insures it, and lo and behold, the car gets stolen. When Tiffany gets that insurance check, she banks it, holds it until Sam’s divorce is final, then gives the money back. It’s no longer community property. There’s a kicker to this particular scenario. Suppose Sam stole the car himself, or arranged to have it stolen? He sells it back to whoever he bought it from, and gets paid off twice.”
Genevieve looked alarmed. “You think Tiffany’s involved in this?”
“I hope not. If she is, it’s more than just bad judgment. It’s fraud.” Genevieve frowned. She hadn’t considered that possibility. “Look, when I talked to Tiffany, she appeared to be genuinely upset about the car. I don’t think she knows anything about how it was stolen. But it’s just too convenient for that Mercedes to disappear a month after she supposedly bought it. It makes me very suspicious.”
We were both silent for a moment. My fingers stroked a couple of piano keys, the notes sounding in the room. Then I heard children’s voices and the thump of feet on the front steps. The screen door opened and two children entered, both with Acey’s dark blond hair and Genevieve’s brown eyes. The younger was a little girl, about eight, scuffed knees showing under her denim shorts and pink shirt. The boy was ten or eleven, dressed in faded dusty jeans and a T-shirt decorated with dinosaurs in neon greens and yellows. School hadn’t started yet, and the kids had a tousled, grubby look that indicated they were wringing the last few days of freedom and pleasure out of the summer.
When they saw me sitting on the piano stool, the children stopped their chatter and looked me over with curious eyes. “Are we gonna go shopping for school clothes?” the boy asked his mother.
“Yes, we are.” Genevieve uncrossed her legs and rose from the sofa in one quick movement. “Find those library books. They’re due today.” As the children headed for the rear of the house, she turned to me. “I can’t talk anymore. I’ve got errands to run and I have to be at work at six.”
“If you have anything to add, call me.” I gave her one of my business cards.
Outside, I sidestepped two bicycles, both with shiny red paint scuffed and scratched with use, which lay against the front steps. “Put those bikes away before we leave,” I heard Genevieve say as I walked to my car.
Twelve
A NAVY CHIEF ONCE TOLD ME EVERY TOWN WITH A Navy base has a “Hey, Joe Boulevard,” a street full of businesses catering to the transient population of sailors in search of food, liquor, tattoos, and entertainment. Sometimes the kind of entertainment sought by sailors is not the sort sanctioned by the Navy or the local police department, but that sort thrives nevertheless. There are always consumers and suppliers, whether the desired commodity is flesh or some other substance.
Webster Street is West Alameda’s shopping district, with banks, stores and restaurants, its length punctuated by AC Transit bus stops that link the island city to Oakland. Webster Street is also Alameda’s “Hey, Joe Boulevard,” though not to the degree you’d find in San Diego or Pearl Harbor. The Navy’s presence in Alameda is smaller, but of long duration. So the street has its share of tattoo parlors, fast food joints, and funky bars full of young men whose hair is so short they are obviously members of Uncle Sam’s yacht club.
Time to stir the pot, I decided Thursday afternoon. I had several leads concerning Sam Raynor’s money. One was Tiffany, whose stolen Mercedes would account for about a third of the money. Then there were the Yancys, Steve and Claudia. I had originally targeted Steve Yancy because of the Friday night poker games, thinking Raynor may have hidden money disguised as gambling debts. But my visit to their cottage had netted other, more interesting possibilities. Claudia Yancy was evidently having an affair with Sam Raynor. Two girlfriends, two places to stash the cash. All these people were pressure points. If Raynor had hidden his money with them, I could put pressure on Raynor through his friends.
It was time I met Raynor’s roommate, Harlan Pettibone. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle the encounter. What did I know about him? Duffy LeBard had described Pettibone as an obnoxious little squirt who liked to get drunk and fight. Claudia Yancy said he was a creep. Mrs. Torelli, Pettibone’s landlady, said he liked to play pool, that he even had a custom-made cue. And he drove an orange Chevy Camaro—the tigermobile. He was consistently late with his rent, which indicated a certain lack of fiscal responsibility. Would Sam Raynor trust a large sum of money to a guy like that?
I circled by the apartment building on Pacific Street, but neither Raynor’s Trans-Am nor Pettibone’s Camaro were there. Then I cruised Webster Street, looking for an orange car with black trim, tiger-striped upholstery, decorated with stuffed tigers. It would be hard to miss such a vehicle, but I didn’t see it on my first pass of Webster, or on any of the side streets feeding into the main drag. It was now late afternoon, coming-home time, and the streets were clogged with cars crawling from red light to red light. Slow-moving buses disgorged passengers and diesel fumes.
I was making little progress on wheels so I switched to shoe leather. I walked up one side of Webster and down the other, peering into doorways. Commuters picked up their laundry or bought take-out suppers at one of the restaurants along the street. In the bars, serious drinkers were getting a head start on the evening. The post office branch and the banks all had lines of last-minute customers. I saw plenty of sailors in civilian clothes, doing a variety of things at a variety of establishments, but Harlan Pettibone was not among them.
I didn’t find him in any of the bars either, as I hunted through them, my eyes smarting from the smoke and the adjustment from bright daylight to dim interior. I received a number of invitations and lots of whistles. The smoke level in the bars brought on a headache. Finally I stood on a corner waiting for a green light, as passengers got off a dirty blue-and-white AC Transit bus. According to my watch, I’d been lurking around Webster Street for over an hour, and still hadn’t located Pettibone. The bus roared off just as the light turned green, and at the opposite curb I spotted a bright orange car.
I hurried across the street and gave the vehicle a quick once-over. It was a late model Camaro, with Texas plates and a Naval Air Station Alameda sticker on the front windshield. I
glanced inside and saw the garish tiger-striped seat covers Mrs. Torelli had described, as well as two plush tigers, the smaller hanging by a cord from the rearview mirror and a larger one upside down, affixed to the rear windshield by suction-cup feet.
The closest bar was on the corner. I’d already checked it out, maybe half an hour ago, but this time when I looked in the open doorway, I saw a short skinny sailor with an odd-looking nose. He had to be Harlan Pettibone. He wore baggy black jeans and black high-top sneakers with orange laces. His orange shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his pale hairless chest, and a gold chain decorated his neck. Under his white-blond short-back-and-sides haircut, he had a narrow rabbity face that was so fair he looked as though he’d burn to the second degree if he spent more than five minutes in the sun.
Pettibone was holding court at the far side of the pool table, his fancy cue in one hand and a bottle of Lone Star beer in the other. The jukebox was at maximum decibel, as Waylon Jennings growled a chorus of “Ramblin’ Man.” Pettibone laughed and shouted over the music, playing jester to a group of friends, all white guys in their early twenties. They looked and sounded as though they were cut from the same bolt of Southern cloth, a bunch of cocky redneck peckerwoods. I took a deep breath of unpolluted air and walked into the bar, zeroing in on my quarry.
Pettibone’s funny nose was truly a marvel. Spackled with freckles, it slanted to the left, then the tip veered off to the right. I decided he was cute in an ugly kind of way. He thought so too. When I stood in front of him, he looked me up and down with a pair of milky blue eyes screened by long sandy lashes. He greeted me with a lascivious grin and a Texas twang.
“Where you been all my life, Big Mama?”
The things I have to put up with. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to smack him or laugh down in his face. Instead I opted to follow his lead. I narrowed my eyes, tilting my aching head.
“I’ve been around.” Disparagement flavored my words. “A lot longer than you. You’re a little young for me.”
Pettibone sidled closer and winked at me. “Honey, I like my women experienced.”
I put my hands on my hips. “At what? Babysitting?”
He roared with laughter. So did his pool-playing buddies. “You got a mouth on you. Is it good for anything but talk?”
“Let’s talk first. Then you might find out.”
He laughed again. “What are you drinking?”
“Lone Star’s fine with me,” I said, indicating the bottle he held. While he paid for the beer, I spotted a small table at the rear of the bar, far enough from the jukebox to make conversation possible. I pulled out a chair as Waylon gave way to Willie Nelson. Pettibone plunked the Lone Star down on the table, pulled the other chair and sat down, his knee rubbing mine.
“So what’s your name, honey?” He threw his left arm over the back of my chair, his hand massaging my shoulder. He leaned forward with what passed for a flirtatious look on his ugly little face.
I raised the cold beer bottle to my lips and took a long swallow. It tasted good after the time I’d spent scouring Webster Street, looking for Pettibone. I unfastened the top button of my shirt and ran the frosted brown glass over my perspiring neck.
“Jeri,” I said, lowering the bottle. “What’s yours?”
“You can just call me Tiger,” he purred, his blue eyes staring at my cleavage. He moved a little closer and his right hand reached for mine, stroking my wrist.
“Big talk for a little guy,” I said with a downward sideways glance. Even seated, I was taller than he was. “Are you sure it’s not Pussycat?”
He leered at me and pressed his leg against mine. “Honey, I just love pussy... cats.”
“Your name is Harlan T. Pettibone.” My voice cooled as I straightened, moving his arm off the chair back.
“How did you know that?” All of a sudden he looked wary instead of horny.
“Word gets around, Harlan. So the T stands for Tiger. I thought maybe it meant Texas.”
“Sometimes it does. Did you come looking for me, honey? For a reason?”
“Sure did, Harlan. Only it’s not the reason you think.”
He shrugged, all hormones and ego, and stretched out his legs. Then he stuck a thumb in his belt, just to the right of his buckle, and let his fingers brush his fly.
“You think I’m too short for you? Honey, I got the inches where they really count. Stick around and I might let you play with ‘em. You don’t know what you’re missin’.”
“I know what I’m missing, Harlan.” I leaned forward and my voice turned cold. “Ten thousand bucks. Sam Raynor owes me that money, plus interest. When I go to collect, he tells me to talk to you.”
Harlan T for Tiger Pettibone proceeded to tap dance, but not very well, considering he was still sprawled in his chair waving his crotch at me. “What the fuck you talking about?” He cocked his head and furrowed his smooth brow. “Do I know anybody named Sam?”
“Harlan, don’t bullshit me. You sure as hell live with him. Over on Pacific Street. Now when do I get my money? He’s owed it to me since he moved here from Guam. I’m damn tired of this runaround.”
Harlan straightened in his chair, all interest in sex wiped off his face. “Hey, I got nothing to do with this. You say Sam owes you money, you’ll have to take that up with him.”
“I already have. He claims he doesn’t have any. Pretty damn convenient, since he used to be so flush on Guam. He’s lying through his teeth, and I bet you are too. You must be holding some of it for him.”
“Me?” Harlan looked outraged. “I’m just scraping by payday to payday, same as Sam. If he says he ain’t got the dough, he ain’t got it.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” I slapped the table with the palm of my hand. Harlan jumped. I waved an emphatic index finger under his skewed nose. “You lying sons of bitches. Both of you. I can see what’s going down here. Sam hid that cash somewhere and now he’ll even deny he knows me. Well, if I don’t know him, how do I know so much about him? You tell Sam he’d better ante up that money. What he got over in the parking lot at Nadine’s was just a taste of what I can deliver.”
I got to my feet and leaned over Harlan, menace in my voice. “If I don’t get my money, I’m gonna be all over you two assholes, like fleas on a dog.”
I turned and strode quickly out of the bar, adrenaline pumping, sucking in the relatively unpolluted air out on Webster Street. Then I headed for my car. If that didn’t stir the pot, nothing would, I thought as I unlocked the door and slipped into the driver’s seat. Maybe I’d laid it on a bit thick, but I’d certainly gotten Harlan’s attention.
As it happened, I got Sam Raynor’s attention too. I don’t know how he got my name and office number, but somehow I wasn’t surprised Friday morning when I picked up the phone and heard his voice crackle over the wire.
“This is Sam Raynor. We need to talk.”
Play...
Thirteen
AFTER SAM RAYNOR STALKED AWAY FROM ME FRIDAY afternoon, I returned to my office, replaying our confrontation as I finished some paperwork and straightened my cluttered desk. I’d pared down my workload in anticipation of my upcoming trip to Monterey, now just a week away. My calendar was clear of all save routine matters—and one case, Ruth’s case.
I tried to separate the antipathy I felt for Raynor from the frustrating facts of the case. Despite rattling cages and digging for information, I was no closer to finding the money than when I started. I had many possibilities but no definite answers. Raynor had hidden his tracks well.
Each time I thought of Raynor, I saw his contorted face and heard his voice, hissing obscenities at me. How could a woman like Ruth marry such a dangerous, violent man? Then I recalled Acey Collins’s description of a snake mesmerizing a rabbit.
At four I locked my office and headed for the stairwell, reaching it as the elevator door opened. Cassie stepped out, wearing a crisp mauve linen suit, her briefcase at her side. “Are you taking what Alex would call a meritorious aft
ernoon off?” she asked with a smile.
I shook my head as I took her place in the elevator, holding the door open. “I have to talk with a client. Anyway, it’s too hot to be cooped up in my office. At least yours is air-conditioned.”
“That’s more than I can say for the courtroom I was in today. Don’t forget dinner tomorrow night. Seven o’clock at my place. You’re bringing Alex and the wine.”
I drove to Forty-first and Howe, where Ruth lived in a three-story security building on the corner, close to her new job at Kaiser Hospital. It was a great setup for her, since she had yet to buy a car. She had a two-block walk in one direction to work, and Wendy’s day care center was nearby, as were the grocery store and other shops on Piedmont Avenue.
When I checked the tenant list outside the double glass doors, I saw that Ruth had put Franklin opposite the buzzer for her apartment, number 303. A necessary precaution, like the security building and the stay-away order. Sam wasn’t supposed to know where she lived. The only time he saw Wendy was during the court-ordered supervised visits at the Franklins’ home in Alameda. He saw Ruth in court.
She wasn’t, home yet, so I waited for her, sitting on the edge of a low concrete planter full of bright red-orange marigolds, the afternoon sun making me warm and sleepy. The Friday afternoon procession began, as people returned from work or zeroed in on Piedmont Avenue, a block away. This Oakland neighborhood was always lively, drawing customers to its shops, restaurants or other amusements, such as the Piedmont Cinema. A bus stopped on Piedmont, then moved on, leaving a handful of shoppers in casual dress, men and women in work attire, and teenagers wearing whatever was de rigueur this summer. Walking briskly toward me was a woman in the uniform of the commuter, gray pinstriped suit with socks and sneakers, briefcase in one hand and an I. Magnin shopping bag in the other. As she strode quickly across Howe Street, walking up Forty-first, she passed a commuter of a different sort.