by Susan Dunlap
“And when you found the match, what’d you do?”
“What could I do? I’m lamed out now.”
Kiernan laughed. “Come on, you don’t expect me to believe you got that bombshell and did nothing more than sit here next to your sliding-glass windows and watch the sun come up in Oakland.”
He shrugged.
Kiernan stood up.
“I’ve driven from San Diego to Big Sur and Big Sur to the city today, and then visited Delaney’s corpse. My patience was low an hour ago. What there was left, you’ve killed. So either you tell me what you got me out here to talk about, or I pack it in!
Olson gazed down at his hands. “Okay, so I did see the Matucci woman.”
“You saw Robin Matucci? I thought she was dead, or at least missing by the time you got the DNA results.”
He stared down at the sticky tabletop. “Well, yeah, I suppose she was. I guess I didn’t give you the chronology straight.”
“Olsen!”
“Well, see,” he went on quickly, “like I said there are a whole lot more red convertibles in the city than there’s any reason for. Whole lot more people who want to freeze their brains off driving. No cop would ever track them all down. But, like I said, I was lamed out. But I’d nothing else to do, so I got a friend at Motor Vehicle to run me a list, and I got hold of every single car on the list. Then when Early Bird went down and they got the hair—”
“So that’s how come you got the results so fast—you could just check hers against what you found on Brant’s body.”
He nodded. “Called in what’s probably my last debt on it, too.”
“Tell me about Robin Matucci. And this time, Olsen, tell me everything.”
A smile slithered across Olsen’s round face. “One knockout of a lady. Real beauty. Long red hair, a set of knockers like … Not a body you’d kick out of bed, if you know what I mean? First time I saw her she was docking, the wind was flapping that hair, pressing her shirt tight against … She was bringing back a load of geezers.” He flicked a thumbnail against a finger. “Suppose you think that’s what I am now.”
“I don’t think anything,” she said, trying to hide her frustration. For someone with no bedside manner, this was a trying conversation.
“You want to know about Matucci, you’re talking to the right guy. I’ve done a background on her that’d make a D.A. kiss my butt.” Kiernan expected him to reach under the table and produce a fat manila file. But he merely leaned back, rested his forearms on the table. “Robin Regina Matucci, age twenty-eight, born here in the city. Father ran an antique shop of sorts south of Market. Gentrified from ‘collectibles’ to ‘antiques,’ like the district’s changed.”
“Past tense?”
“Yeah, went paws up a year ago. Mugged, fell and cracked his head on a parking meter. Artery burst, and it’s doggie heaven.”
“And Robin inherited his shop?”
Olsen laughed. “No storybook ending. She didn’t inherit nothing. Unless you call spending days helping her mother clean out the junk something. No, all Robin got from that shop was the need to escape, an itch for the sea. And a fleet load of ambition. I talked to every guy on the pier and they all say the same thing: Robin Matucci was one damned smart woman. Some say nice, some call her a good captain, some just say she knew which way the waves were breaking.”
Kiernan nodded. She could sympathize only too well with Robin Matucci’s reaction to childhood confinement. “And the customers, the guys who paid for the day charter?”
“To them she was a queen. She had good coffee on board, a good surface to stand on so they weren’t falling all over the place, and best of all, every single one said nobody could find fish like Robin Matucci.” He held up a hand. “Now, soon as I tell you, you’ll catch on here. There’s fish hiding out all over the Pacific. According to the captains, there’s stuff you can watch for, radio chatter you can try to second-guess, but even if you do everything right you can still come up empty. Or you can motor out blind and hit a school of salmon. So you got the captains trying to second-guess the elements, and the passengers trying to second-guess the captains. The regulars decide a captain’s lucky, and they follow. Some of these regulars fish three or four days a week. They’re experts on rating the boats. And to a one, they swear Robin was the best.”
“How’d she do it?”
“No one knows. Believe me, I asked.”
“She owned the boat.”
“Right.”
With satisfaction, Kiernan noted the surprise in Olsen’s voice. Suspicion that she might already have done some research would move him to truth a lot faster than any cajolery. “Boats cost a couple hundred thou. How’d Robin Matucci come by that?”
“A bank loan. And a bunch of summers in Alaska, working the fishing camps and the charters. You can make a bundle up there if you know what you’re doing, and you’re working so damned hard you don’t have the energy to spend it, even if you’re close enough to someplace that’ll sell you stuff.”
“Alaska. When?”
“Three, four, five years ago.”
When Garrett Brant was there. But Alaska was a big place. “Do you have a Social Security printout on her?”
He nodded. But he didn’t produce it.
He was waiting to deal. But it wasn’t time for that yet. It was time to get what was free. “What did Robin Matucci say about the hit-and-run?”
“Now that was interesting,” Olsen said, putting his elbows on the table. The movement made him wince, and he tightened the shoulder on the side of his injured hip. “The first time I ask, she denies knowing about it, but I was a cop long enough to spot a liar. So I go back, see. This time she ‘accidentally’ dumps a bucket of fish water on me. Not smart, because that really tells me I’m on the right track. So I go back the next day. And she pushes straight past me. Did I mention the woman’s six feet tall?”
“Six feet?”
“Well, maybe five nine or ten. But she’s strong. You don’t captain a boat without muscles.”
“So what’s so interesting about her avoiding you?”
“That last time—it was right before she disappeared—she said, ‘Why are you busting your butt about this, the statute’s run out?’”
Kiernan nodded. “Interesting indeed.”
Olsen beamed. “Yeah. She might’ve known the date of the hit-and-run. I might’ve thrown that in myself. But the length of a specific statute of limitations, how many people know that? How many civilians even know which one would apply to a crime like that, right?”
“Right,” Kiernan said, extending a hand for him to shake. “And then she and Delaney go overboard.”
“Or Delaney goes overboard.”
“This your version, or does it come from the guys on the dock?” she asked.
“Mine alone.” Olsen glanced through his glass doors at the fog. “Delaney washed up on the Farallons. What was left of the boat washed up south of the city. We don’t know where Robin Matucci went over. Could be she jumped out and swam to shore.”
“But the fishermen don’t think so?”
“’Cording to them they don’t think anything. Maybe that’s ’cause they’re smarter than me.”
Purposely ignoring his tacit demand for sympathy, Kiernan waited. God, why couldn’t the man grow up?
“When I came back from asking around the last time, my windshield was bashed in. Slivers of glass all over the driver’s seat. Just the driver’s seat. I know what a sliver of glass did to Brant. So, with a rare show of smarts, I figure I got enough to worry about with this hip, without losing my brain besides. It’s making me crazy to get this far and have to drop it, but that’s what I got to do.”
“And you’re hoping I’ll do the legwork?”
“Nah. I’m not looking for gifts. What I told you tonight, it’s a loss leader.”
Kiernan nodded. “Who’s the best guy on the dock to tackle?”
He grinned. “What’d your friend Marc Rosten tell you ab
out Delaney?”
“Grow up, Olsen. I am too tired and grumpy to deal with an adolescent.”
“I’m asking about Delaney,” he said archly.
She sighed. “Bad eyes and drunk.”
Olsen smiled. “On the dock, talk to Ben Pedersen on Nelda’s Dream. But watch out for him. Looks like a teddy bear. Could be a grizzly. He’ll tell you a lot, but what he won’t say is that he picked up a bundle of business after Matucci went over.” He paused and waited to catch her eye. “Here’s one thing he won’t be anxious to tell you: He’s in hock up to the gills.”
14
KIERNAN CHECKED INTO A motel off Lombard Street, halfway between Olsen’s and Fisherman’s Wharf. She called Tchernak, said good night to Ezra, and set her alarm for 4:00 A.M.
At ten to five she parked across the street from Fisherman’s Wharf. Before the hum of the motor died out, fog coated the windshield. As she hurried toward the wharf the wind iced her face. Streetlights offered a muted glow too weak to make it to the ground.
The wharf, one of the area’s main tourist attractions, was no bigger than a city block. It was surrounded on four sides by souvenir shops, restaurants, and storage warehouses. A single narrow lane of water was all that connected it to the Bay. Although it was a working dock, it was so wedged in by pretentious honky-tonk that it looked fake and shoddy itself. Kiernan walked behind the row of restaurants that formed the connecting line of, its reversed E shape, and stood outside the pale circle of light near the dock’s center. A sea lion barked, demanding an early breakfast. She recalled complaints about sea lions who’d discovered the good life—the pro-lion newsmen had had a lot of fun with them. There had been complaints about everything here, including the restaurants, one of which—the Crab Cage Café—had gone so far as to attach a fake plywood crab cage to its roof. It was considered a fitting symbol of the wharfs pervasive tawdriness.
The cold wind cut through her sweater. The boats were half hidden in fog, but she could smell coffee, hear the slap of rubber boots against planking, and the splash of water being rinsed off decks. She made her way along the pier trying to see the names of the boats in the dim light, and finally spotted Nelda’s Dream. It was the size of an eighteen-wheeler. The front two-thirds of it were enclosed. Kiernan walked out onto the slip. The cabin light was on, and through the mist-shrouded windows, she could make out a man looking at a clipboard.
“Ben?” she called. “Ben Pedersen?”
“Yeah. Who’re you?”
“Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. I just need a few minutes of your time. To ask a couple of questions.”
“I’ve got paying customers who’ll be getting here in twenty minutes.” He turned. In the light the bearlike form looked more like a grizzly than a teddy. The lines on his weathered face suggested snap decisions and little tolerance. And he was nearly the size of Tchernak.
“Being up at this hour is more painful for me than it is for you, believe me.”
“You another reporter nosing around about Robin Matucci?”
“Private Investigator. It’ll take you less time to talk to me than decide if you can be bothered. Can I come aboard?”
He tapped a meaty hand on the rail, considering. “Okay. Ten minutes. No more. Step’s are back there,” he said pointing toward the dock.
Kiernan climbed the three-step wedge in place next to the boat. Once aboard, the boat seemed smaller. The decking, which she had pictured as polished teak, was covered with rough gray paint, a non-skid surface. Pedersen motioned her forward, inside a room that resembled a small diner, with four booths and Formica tables. Farther forward was the room with the steering wheel and radio, was that the wheelhouse? Or the cabin? Or, dammit, was this the cabin?
Without asking, Pedersen poured a second mug of coffee, held it out to her and sat in the nearest booth.
“Thanks.” She slid in across from him.
“Private eye, huh? The insurance company trying to squeeze out of paying? You working for them?”
“No. I’m no fan of bureaucracies. I get up at four in the morning so I can work for myself.”
Pedersen took a swallow of coffee. He looked only slightly less suspicious.
On the radio a tenor voice said, “Probably be socked in all day. Whaddya think, Deke?”
Pedersen was watching her, but his head was cocked toward the radio. She said, “I heard Robin Matucci was the most successful captain on the wharf.”
“Who told you that?”
Kiernan smiled. “Someone who didn’t like her. So I paid attention. Why do you think she attracted so many customers?”
“Because her people caught fish, that’s why! That’s the name of the game.” He rapped his fingers on the table. “She always had the best equipment, the latest in everything. Whatever it took, Robin would do it. She deserved her success,” he said, bitterly.
For a man in hock “up to the gills,” that bitterness wasn’t hard to understand. Was this the time to challenge Pedersen about that? From the dock voices grumbled, muffled by the fog.
The voices on the radio cut in on each other. “What about up toward Bodega?”
“Windward of the Farallons?”
No, keep the finance question as an ace in the hole. “What was Robin doing out in such a bad storm?”
“She left the day before. The storm hadn’t started then. It wasn’t supposed to get that bad.”
“So it doesn’t surprise you that she could have drowned?”
“No. Not going out in a storm like that,” he said angrily, but for the first time looked pained.
An abandoned lover or would-be lover? That threw a new light on Pedersen. “Would it surprise you if Robin didn’t drown?”
He lifted his coffee mug, but didn’t drink. And when he set it down it vibrated against the Formica. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that, wished for it, changed the weather in my head? Suppose it’d cleared instead of getting worse? What if the rain had started Monday morning instead of Monday night? Then maybe she wouldn’t have gone. What if someone picked her up on their way to Hawaii? Dammit, do you think there’s a possibility that you can come up with what I haven’t already squeezed dry?” He lifted the mug with both hands and gulped down coffee. “She had a Zodiac, a rubber dingy, and survival suits on board. But a Zodiac would be useless in a storm and you don’t swim in from the Farallons.”
“We only know he went over near the Farallons. What makes you think she did?”
“She didn’t have time to call for help. No one heard a call.”
Kiernan raised a palm. “No, what we know is that she didn’t call for help, not necessarily that she couldn’t. Why would Delaney’s body be on the Farallons, the boat have washed ashore south of the city and Robin Matucci’s body be nowhere around?”
He banged the mug down. Coffee spilled in all directions. “Because Delaney was a drunk. Jesus! I could have told her that. Yeah, he swore he’d been dry for years. And then what do I hear but that the guy’s got enough liquor in him for New Year’s Eve. If he’d stayed sober, maybe they’d both still be alive.” He reached behind him for a rag.
“Why’d Robin hire him? Shouldn’t she have known better?”
“Yeah, well,” he said, mopping up the coffee, “Robin was sharp as they come dealing with city inspectors, and suppliers. She could scotch a fight on board Early Bird before the second guy realized he was being baited. But, damn, she was one pushover for half-assed deckhands.” He flung the sopping rag into the sink behind him.
“How come?”
“Got me,” he mumbled, his voice unsteady. “You can work with a bad deckhand, but it makes your job twice as hard. The worst deckhands are the ones who can’t deal with people. They make their money in tips, so that kind don’t last. And that wasn’t the problem with Robin’s guys. They were …” He fingered his beard. “Well, deckhand is not a career position. The biggest problem is guys who don’t show up one morning and leave you shorthanded. The guys Robin took on, they couldn’t get
the hang of things. She used to laugh about it. Said when they were baiting a hook they were working to capacity.”
“And was Delaney like that?”
Pedersen spun his mug around thoughtfully. “No, he wasn’t dumb. Unless you call getting so drunk you can’t stand on deck dumb. Dead dumb. And he never did that till that last day. There was no way she could have known he’d fall apart like that. No way any of us could have warned her. No one on the dock ever saw him drunk.”
“How long had he worked for her?”
“I don’t know. A month maybe.”
“Did he work for anyone else?”
“No. Robin was the top of the heap.”
The sea lion had moved closer, barking impatiently. On the dock more voices called back and forth, buckets and chains clanked more insistently. Feet slapped the ladder beside the boat and a lanky man stepped on board, hauling two buckets after him. Pedersen glanced at him, then at his watch. To Kiernan, he said, “I have to get moving. But look, if there’s anything funny about Robin’s death, I want to know.”
Kiernan nodded. “And, I can take it, you’ll help me however you can?”
“Right.”
“Okay, who was her closest friend?”
“Girlfriends? Not many women here. Sometimes her sister’d meet her across the street, but she never came on the dock, just waited over there. Then they’d go get Robin’s car and drive off in that red car with their red hair flowing out behind them.” He swallowed hard.
“Where does this sister live?”
“Don’t know. Never met her. For some reason Robin never wanted to talk about her.”
Odd, Kiernan thought, but there was no time to press him for speculation. “What about friends here, on the dock?”
“Everyone liked Robin. She was everyone’s friend.”
“Including the deckhands?” Kiernan asked skeptically. Nobody is everyone’s friend.
“Oh, yeah. She started as a hand herself. It’s not easy for a woman. Back-breaking work, you leave here at six. You’ve got guys tanked up by the middle of the day. If they don’t catch anything, they’re hauling off at their neighbor. If they do, they’re celebrating by grabbing ass. Keeps a woman deckhand on her toes.” He laughed. “Robin told me that was the joy of being captain, when things got bad she had the wheelhouse to keep her butt in.”