Revenge of the Spellmans

by Lisa Lutz

  Dr. Schwartzman sat down in his comfortable leather chair, snapped a tiny cassette into a tiny tape recorder (he should really update to digital), and asked me if I minded if he recorded our session, explaining that sometimes he likes to revisit some topics to figure out a better way to help his patients. I told him it was alright and pulled out my own palm-sized digital recorder and asked him if he minded if I, too, recorded the proceedings. Dr. Ira seemed pleased, which I assumed meant he thought I was taking the whole therapy thing seriously. I didn’t want to lower his expectations at that moment, so I just switched on my recorder and launched into my introduction.

  THERAPY SESSION #1

  [Partial transcript reads as follows:]

  ISABEL: Dr. Schwartzman—is that what I should call you?

  DR. IRA: Most of my patients call me Dr. Ira.

  ISABEL: Dr. Ira it is. So, you know why I’m here, right?

  DR. IRA: Why don’t you tell me?

  ISABEL: I have to come here. If I don’t, I could go to prison. This seems better.

  DR. IRA: So you’re here to avoid prison? Is that what I’m hearing?

  ISABEL: Yes.

  DR. IRA: Is there another reason?

  ISABEL: I think that’s a pretty good reason. [Long pause. 1 ]

  DR. IRA: How does it feel being required by law to seek therapy?

  ISABEL: Not great.

  DR. IRA: Can you elaborate?

  ISABEL: I think that states it pretty well.

  DR. IRA: Is this your first time in therapy?

  ISABEL: Yes, totally.

  [For approximately ten minutes, Dr. Ira launches into what seems like a scripted exposition about the rules of therapy. If I threaten to hurt anyone, he can report it to the police, blah, blah, blah. Then the real work begins. When he was finished, our session continued.]

  DR. IRA: So is there anything you’d like to discuss?

  ISABEL: I can’t think of anything.

  DR. IRA: Well, why don’t you tell me about your family?

  ISABEL: They’re pretty ordinary, really. Just like any other family.

  WHERE WAS I?

  T hat was how my therapy began. I’ll spare you sessions two through nine (you’ll thank me later, or not, if you like). Suffice it to say I lied to Dr. Ira about my family, which I’m sure you’ve guessed already if you read either of the previous two documents or glanced at the appendix. If not, you don’t know much about me, so maybe I should mention just a bit more.

  I am a licensed private investigator who has been working for the family business, Spellman Investigations, since the age of twelve. No, that is not a typo. It sounds fun, I know. But after decades of having your boyfriends investigated, your bedroom searched, your phoned tapped, your vehicle tracked, and your every move documented, it gets old. In my family, we don’t ask questions; we investigate.

  After the trouble I had last year, I decided to take an extended break from the family business. It was my job that got me into trouble, so I figured a temporary career change might solve some of my problems. Unfortunately, my job skills were limited, so I began working at a bar, the Philosopher’s Club, which used to be my own personal watering hole.

  I assumed bartending wasn’t bad work if you could get it, but I didn’t know that on a good night I could earn $200 in tips. Sure, you have to be on your feet the whole time, but you don’t have to sit on your ass in a car for eight hours waiting for someone to leave when you know he’s not going to leave. I’m not saying that I saw a future serving drinks for a living, but I am saying it was a nice change of pace. I liked not having my parents as bosses. I liked not being concerned with what other people were doing besides what they poured down their throats.

  I needed a change and I got it. As for therapy…I’ll admit that with Dr. Ira, I didn’t give it my all. I saw therapy as a punishment—which it was. There’s no way I could call it anything else. So, like I would any punishment, I thought I’d simply endure it. My point is that it never occurred to me I could get anything out of therapy. At least it didn’t until long after Dr. Ira decided to take a stand.

  I moved into David’s house on Monday at 6:00 P . M . Within the first twenty-four hours, I slept in his bed, used his electric toothbrush (I changed the head), moved the chaise longue closer to the television, drank a single shot of each liquor on the do-not-drink list, 1 and visited exactly one porn site just for the sake of his browser history.

  David occupies a restored three-story Victorian all by his lonesome. Even for a married man, or a married man with two children, a couple of dogs, a cat, and a giant tropical fish tank, his 2,500-square-foot home is a lot of space, especially for anyone accustomed to San Francisco living. I made plans that week not to make plans so I could fully enjoy my brief time living in the lap of luxury.

  I suppose I should mention my own living situation.

  For the first eighteen years of my life, I occupied a single room on the second level of the Spellman family residence, located at 1799 Clay Street in the lower Nob Hill district of San Francisco. For the next ten years I resided in an attic apartment (approx. 700 square feet) at the very same address. At the age of twenty-eight, I decided that it was time to move out of the family home and began subletting a one-bedroom apartment (approx. 650 square feet) from Bernie Peterson, a retired police lieutenant who was friends with my uncle Ray (now deceased). Last year when Bernie was having marital difficulties, he decided to move back into that apartment. After months of being an unwelcome guest in an assortment of locations, I eventually realized that I had to find a place of my own with a lease in my name. That is when I moved into my current residence—a studio apartment (350 square feet) in the Tenderloin. My bachelor apartment is sandwiched between two other bachelor apartments, one occupied by a sixty-five-year-old retired schoolteacher with a snoring problem (Hal) and the other inhabited by a thirtysomething woman who I can only assume is a hooker; either that or she does a lot of entertaining. I don’t sleep well in my apartment, and frankly, asleep is the only condition in which I don’t feel like complaining about my apartment. Perhaps that explains why I was so pleased to have four weeks of vacation from my real life.

  After I found some time to unwind and reorganize David’s liquor cabinet, 2 I began my preliminary investigation, which consisted of ransacking my brother’s office looking for some sign of foreign travel preparation. My theory was this: David is a type A, education-obsessed individual who would not consider traveling to a foreign land without taking a serious crash course in its language, culture, and key sightseeing attractions. I was looking for at least a minor collection of Italian for Beginners tapes and travel literature. What I found was a gun.

  It wasn’t in an obvious location. I should mention that. It was taped to the underside of the bottom right drawer on his desk. This was confusing for a number of reasons:

  A) David has never been the gun-toting type, or even the taping-a-gun-to-the-bottom-of-a-desk-drawer type. B) David doesn’t like guns; he’s more of a pepper spray kind of guy. C) I knew there was a C, but frankly, the discovery of the gun was so alarming that I couldn’t come up w
ith a C at that moment.

  To be honest, I had no idea what the gun meant, if anything. I was only sure of two things at the time of my discovery: David wasn’t in Italy, and my investigation was far from over.

  THE END OF THE ROAD

  A side from my brother and my new client, Ernie Black, I had one other investigation that was perhaps the most urgent of all—a matter of life and death, come to think of it.

  Morty and I agreed to have lunch that Thursday at a diner on upper Market Street. Since Morty and David both live in Russian Hill, I knew I could ask him for a ride without raising suspicion.

  My octogenarian friend swung by at 11:45 A . M .—another sign of aging, I’ve noticed, is the taking of meals earlier and earlier in the day. Before I got into Morty’s Cadillac I took a moment to inspect the exterior of his vehicle. I spotted a scratch along the front fender and another small dent on the rear bumper. Oh, and the car was filthy, which normally isn’t the sort of thing I’d comment on, but Morty is not the kind of guy to drive around in a grimy car. It was simply yet another sign of neglect.

  I got into the Cadillac, removed the glasses from Morty’s head, and cleaned them.

  “How do you not notice that they’re dirty?” I asked. “They’re right in front of your eyes.”

  “I have more important things on my mind,” he replied, snatching the glasses out of my hand, returning them to his head, and pulling onto the road without checking his rearview mirror. Fortunately, no one was coming. But you can only get lucky so many times. On the fifteen-minute drive, Morty broke about half of the traffic laws out there—most significantly running a stop sign at twenty-five miles an hour and making a left turn without using his turn signal (a particular pet peeve of mine). By the time we were entering the restaurant, I’d determined that my objective during lunch would be to identify a person who had the power to take away Morty’s driver’s license.

  “Is Ruthy still in Florida?” I asked.

  “As far as I know,” Morty replied.

  “When is she coming back?”

  “‘When hell freezes over’ is her current plan.”

  “I see,” I replied, realizing that the situation was far worse than I’d imagined. “Who is your emergency contact while she’s out of town?”

  “What? I don’t know.”

  “I assume it’s your son, the cardiologist.”

  “Sure. I guess so. He’s in the south of France for the summer with his new girlfriend.”

  “If he’s in France, he can’t be your emergency contact. What other relatives do you have in the area?”

  “What’s with the third degree, Izzele?”

  “I just think I should have the number of your emergency contact.”

  “My grandson. Gabe.”

  “You should give me his info. Do you have your phone book on you?”

  Morty pulled his black book from his breast pocket. “He owns a skate shop south of Market. Here’s his number. I’m sure you won’t need it. I don’t have plans to break my hip anytime soon.”

  “No one plans to break their hip,” I said.

  “Bah,” Morty replied.

  Gabe Schilling’s skate shop was flanked by a high-end fashion boutique and a comic book store in South Park. I felt obliged to handle this matter in person to be sure it was taken seriously, so I drove to the shop after lunch.

  I asked the pimply young male at the counter if Gabe Schilling was in. He stared at me as if I were a tax collector.

  “May I ask what this is regarding?” he asked, with mock formality.

  “It’s a personal matter,” I replied in the same tone.

  The young male shifted his head toward the back of the store and dropped his professional demeanor.

  “Dude, you have a visitor.”

  Another male in his mid-to late twenties with sloppy brown hair, tanned skin, and grease on his fingers, which he was wiping off with a rag, came to the front of the store. Unlike the kid at the counter, who I later learned was his employee, Gabe—Morty’s grandson, ex–professional skateboarder (smashed his knee in a career-ending accident), current entrepreneur (one skate shop open in San Francisco, another on the way in the North Bay)—didn’t eye me with the same suspicion. He smiled. It was warm and oddly familiar. He had pieces of Morty in him, I realized later, just not enough to make him seem, well, pickled or something.

  “Hi. I’m Isabel Spellman, a friend of your grandfather’s.”

  Gabe’s eyes turned upward, consulting his memory. “You’re Izzele? The one who goes to jail?” he said as if he were speaking to a celebrity.

  “Most people call me Izzy.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “When was the last time you were in a car with your grandfather behind the wheel?”

  “I never let him drive. He’s a terrible driver.”

  “He’s worse now.”

  “How much worse?”

  “If he were my grandfather, I would have confiscated his keys already. But he’s yours. Just go for a drive with him. If you survive, you can make up your own mind.”

  CASE #001 1

  CHAPTER 1

  E rnie Black insisted this would be the easiest job of my career. His wife worked at his muffler shop, went to a book club now and again, occasionally took in a movie with a neighbor friend, and handled domestic duties. A couple of times a month, Linda claimed to be having lunch or shopping or both with a very old school friend named Sharon Bancroft. The friendship seemed odd for a number of reasons, but mostly because of the disparity in their social status. Sharon was married to a congressman from a well-to-do San Francisco family. “Old money,” Ernie said, rubbing his thumb and fingers together. Ernie had never met Sharon, even though the women had met in grade school. But Ernie always found Sharon suspicious and he never quite understood how a politician’s wife found so much time to spend with a muffler shop owner’s wife. Ernie seemed a little too conscious of status for my liking, but he was older—fifty-five, according to his credit report—and maybe things like that mattered more where he came from.

  Ernie gave me his wife’s vital statistics so that I could run a background check if need be. But he insisted it was unnecessary. Ernie just wanted to make sure his marriage wasn’t in trouble. If all she was doing during her long absences was having lunch with an old friend, then Ernie could rest easy. All he wanted to know was whether his wife was having an affair or shoplifting or dealing drugs. Once I had the answer, case closed.

  In light of Ernie’s recent suspicions, I asked him if he’d ever followed his wife to see whether she was, in fact, only having lunch. He responded, “No, I’d never do that.”

  I’m fascinated by ethical distinctions like that.

  On Thursday evening, after a three-hour search of David’s home, just when I was about to call it a night, Ernie phoned to inform me that his wife had made plans the following day with Sharon. He said the woman’s name as if she were an imaginary friend. We would soon find out. I agreed to be in front of his residence the following morning at 10:30 A . M . 2

  I’ve said this before: Surveillance is boring. Don’t let the movies fool you. Watching an ordinary person live his or her life in real time is usually uneventful. They don’t do things all that differently from you or me.

  Linda Black exited her home at 11:10 A .
M . and got into her vehicle—a ten-year-old Honda Civic. Linda was indeed a redhead, although patches of color had begun to fade near her brow. She wore her hair long and wavy, clipping it in back with a single barrette. She was approximately five foot six and slim but not skinny. An even pattern of freckles ran across her entire face. From a distance she appeared to be in her midthirties. Upon closer viewing, her real age (forty-five) was more evident. She had not shied away from the sun; through my binoculars I could see deep wrinkles framing her eyes. You could count the creases in her forehead. Still, the end result was attractive. She seemed comfortable in her skin.

  Linda drove from her home in San Bruno (south of the city) to downtown San Francisco. She parked her car in the Macy’s parking lot and took the elevator to the top floor. She had an hour-and-a-half lunch with the woman Ernie described as Sharon Bancroft (who appeared to be a cinematic stereotype of a congressman’s wife).

  I estimated Sharon’s age to be within a few years of Linda’s, but she’d aged less willingly. She was pale, with the skin tone and facial expressions of a porcelain doll. I concluded that Botox was her drug of choice, maybe along with diet pills, judging by her emaciated frame and the way she picked at her salad at lunch.

  Even if I weren’t investigating the women, I might have noticed that they were mismatched. I saw no evidence of opposites attracting. The women seemed uncomfortable with each other, their conversation strained.

  After lunch, the women shopped. More accurately, Sharon displayed items for Linda, and Linda shook her head. Eventually Sharon wore down Linda’s protests and bought her a scarf. The women exited Macy’s and separated in the parking lot. Once Sharon was out of sight, Linda reentered the department store and returned the scarf for a store credit. Upon later examination of a similar scarf in the store, I learned that it cost close to five hundred dollars.