Carlucci turned left onto Bryant Street, turned up Third one block to Harrison, then Harrison onto Ninth Street heading toward Market. Market onto Hayes onto Franklin to Fulton Street and Benny Carlucci was on his way home in style.
The police cruiser, siren blaring, pulled Carlucci over at Masonic Avenue, across from the University of San Francisco, just three short blocks from Benny’s apartment.
The attractive woman who came out of the Civic Center BART station had little resemblance to the woman who had walked down into the Powell Street station twenty minutes earlier. Gone were the dark glasses. Also gone were the heavy blue coat and the blue scarf, replaced by an emerald green two-piece jogging suit and a mane of strawberry blond hair tied back with a green elastic terrycloth band. The .38 caliber Smith and Wesson was now strapped around her ankle.
Once above ground, on Hyde across from the plaza, she jogged in place for a minute before starting up McAllister to the Civic Center Parking Garage. She picked up her car and drove out Geary Boulevard to 25th and then up Lincoln Boulevard to Baker Beach for a solitary run in the sand.
Just before one in the morning, Blake Sanchez stood at a dark street corner in Oakland and watched as one of his least favorite neighbors moved the doormat on his porch and lifted a loose board. Sanchez saw the man place something through the opening and under the porch and then replace the board and the mat before entering the house.
Sanchez took another deep pull off his dope pipe and made a mental note.
What I don’t know would fill a book. What I didn’t know about her could fill a library. It felt as if I was getting closer to her, but it was like looking into a fun-house mirror. She had constructed so many layers of self-deception, she could deflect a jackhammer. I had no idea what she wanted and I convinced myself I didn’t care. It was not an attraction based on the intellectual or the spiritual. It was nothing logical, just biological. The sex wasn’t all that great, come to think of it—and I was thinking about it too often. I thought I was in love with her long after I was sure I didn’t like her. If she had any idea about what she wanted, she kept it a deep dark secret from herself. At first I saw something in her, honesty, selflessness—something she couldn’t see, because it was never really there.
“What do you think?”
“About what?” asked Ira Fennessy.
“I wrote that,” Tom Romano said, sitting between Jake and Ira in the back seat of the taxicab, holding a tattered sheet of paper in his hand.
“Why would you write something like that?” Ira asked.
Jake decided to stay out of it. His head felt the size of the Trans America Pyramid, point and all.
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “For fun I guess.”
The taxi pulled up in front of O’Reilly’s to let them out. The insane crowd was spilling out onto Green Street.
“You have no idea what fun is,” Ira said, “but you are about to find out.”
Jake wanted to protest. He desperately wanted to say something, anything that might rescue them.
But he couldn’t get his tongue to work.
“I liked what you wrote,” said the cab driver as they piled out of the taxi to join the mob.
It was well past midnight, a new day—but it was still St. Patrick’s Day in San Francisco.
TWO
Thursday, March 18, 2004.
Trouble is like rain.
It arrives when you least need it.
And when you are least prepared for it.
I opened my eyes and looked up.
6:04 A.M.
The time was projected on the ceiling in large bright green numbers and letters from the clock radio beside the bed—a birthday gift I thought was cute for about two days. It was like an advertisement for unfulfilled wishes. I had hoped it would be much later. I wanted to close my eyes again. Not move. But my bladder was a merciless bully.
I tossed off the bed covers and the cold hit me like an ice cream truck. I discovered I was dressed for going out, or at least dressed the way I had dressed to go out the night before.
I felt infinitely worse than I had when I fell into the bed only three hours earlier, which seemed incredible though not surprising. I tried remembering how I had made it home, but gave up on it quickly. Not a clue.
It had been nearly a year since I had moved back into the house near the Presidio, but I often woke up forgetting where I was. At that particular moment I was having a lot of trouble remembering who I was.
I slipped on my baby blue Crocs and staggered to the bathroom to urinate, intending to be back in the sack in record time. Instead, I finished my business and stumbled down the stairs, found my jacket on the steps halfway down, tried keeping my balance as I put it on and made it out to the front porch for more self-abuse.
I lit a Camel non-filtered cigarette.
It was colder outside than in, but wouldn’t be for long. The porch faced east and once the morning haze burned off it would be drenched in sunlight. The house had been marketed as being cool in summer. The pitch neglected to publicize the frigid in all other seasons feature. On a balmy day in late winter, which this day promised to be, when you entered the house was when you battled the elements.
Both cars were safe in the driveway, which led me to believe I had not driven either one the night before. If I had, one or both would have been twisted knots of tortured rubber, glass, vinyl and steel. Most of the automobiles in the neighborhood were less than two years old and had names that were German or Swedish. My vehicles were a brown 1978 Toyota Corona four-door sedan and a red 1963 Chevy Impala convertible. I loved them both for different reasons and used them accordingly. I was relieved to find them both intact after a stupidly excessive night of green beer and Jameson’s Irish whiskey. I am not a big drinker—but give me a good excuse like St. Patrick’s Day, a pal’s birthday, a Friday or Saturday night, or the joyful sounds of birds singing and I can usually keep up with the Jones’.
I dropped my unfinished cigarette to the ground, to be picked up and discarded at some later time, and returned to the chill inside. I removed the jacket, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and I carefully negotiated the stairway. Up. I washed down a couple of Excedrin to ease my aching body—understanding it was like using a Band-Aid to treat a severed limb.
I struggled free of my party clothes and into sweat pants and shirt. There are many good things to say about down comforters which you forget completely when you are not under one. I covered myself to my chin in an urgent attempt to recall the wonders of goose feathers. I used the remote control to start up a Five For Fighting CD and prayed against all odds that the gentle piano would quiet the drum beating in my head. The projection on the ceiling insisted it was twenty-three minutes after six. I promised myself I would figure out how to disable the slideshow as soon as humanly possible. I closed my eyes and begged for sleep.
My prayers were answered for precisely six minutes.
My eyes popped open. I looked up. The lit numbers on the ceiling screamed six twenty-nine. Judging by the sound that woke me I expected to find myself sitting beside Quasimodo atop the cathedral tower, him pulling the rope with one hand and punching me in the side of my head with the other. Another peel of the deafening bell and another sock in the ear and then another. When it happened the fifth time, I realized at last it was the telephone. I struggled to grab the receiver and hit the talk button. It reduced the buzzing in my head by fifty per cent.
“Jake.”
“Darlene?”
“Since when does my name have five syllables?”
“Give me a break, Darlene. I’m not doing very well.”
“I’ll say. I’ve heard myna birds with better diction.”
“Did you call this early to torture me?”
“I called this early because Joey tried calling you and when he couldn’t reach you he called me.”
“I was outside smoking and must have missed the call.”
“Well, I was having a very pleasa
nt dream featuring Hugh Jackman.”
“What’s so special about Hugh Jackman?”
“You’ll never know until you see the X-Men movies.”
“And what is it with grown women dreaming about movie stars?”
“It’s probably a bit like a World War Two G.I. keeping a photo of Betty Grable in his locker or like the picture of Rachel Weisz you keep in your wallet. Are you going to ask why Joey called, or do you want to continue trying to beat the subject of idol worship to death?”
“Why did Joey call?” I asked.
“Tony Carlucci called Joey so Joey called you.”
“I’m having some difficulty putting the two actions together.”
“The way you’re slurring your words makes me wonder if you could manage to put your two hands together,” Darlene said, without a hint of sarcasm. “Call Joey.”
“Are you going back to sleep?”
“Too late for that, Hugh’s gone. I may as well go for my morning run and get ready to go to the office. Pay some bills, stare at a silent telephone, and calculate the odds that you will show up there before noon. Call Joey.”
The line went dead.
Joey was Joseph Vongoli a.k.a. Joey Russo a.k.a. Joey Clams.
From the day I met him, and for the next five years, he was Joey Russo. Nearly a year ago he took a trip to Chicago to save my neck, and while he was at it he avenged the death of his sister and reinstated the family name.
Joey’s father, Louis Vongoli, a.k.a. Louie Clams, was forced out of the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois by the Giancana family in the thirties. Vongoli relocated to San Francisco with his wife and son and he changed his name to Russo for protection against reprisal. When Joey reclaimed the name Vongoli he went from being known as Joey Russo to being known as Joey Clams, vongoli being the Italian word for clams and clams being easier to pronounce for Anglos.
Tony Carlucci was generally a world of trouble.
I called Joey to find out exactly what sort this time.
He picked up the phone after half a ring.
“Joey, what’s up?”
“Jake, you sound like crap.”
I’d managed three words and he already had me pegged.
“Too much Jameson’s last night.”
“Don’t tell me you went Irish pub hopping.”
“It was Ira Fennessy’s idea.”
“You call that an idea?”
“We got together to play cards with Tom Romano and Ira talked us into checking out Celtic landmarks instead.”
“Sorry to hear it. Tony Carlucci woke me up earlier this morning.”
“I heard.”
“Tony needs to speak with you as soon as possible.”
“What did I do this time, leave food on my plate?”
Carlucci ran a restaurant in North Beach where I ate occasionally because his mother was on some kind of mission to fatten me up. Not unlike my own mother’s crusade. If I didn’t clean my plate it caused undue grief. If Tony’s mom was not happy, Tony was not happy.
And when Tony Carlucci was not happy with you, he was a nightmare.
“It’s no joke, Jake. Tony sounded very upset. Don’t ask me what about, he wouldn’t say—but he insisted he had to talk with you right away. He will call at your office at nine and expects you to be there. Be there, Jake.”
Great.
“I certainly will be, Joey.”
“Give me a call as soon as Tony’s done with you.”
Interesting choice of words I thought.
I promised Joey I would call immediately after Tony was done with me and then I painfully negotiated my way across the hall toward the shower.
THREE
Kenny Gerard was nothing if not punctual.
Kenny was never late for work or, for that matter, early.
His work was that of a doorman slash security guard in a high-rise apartment building at Mission and Third. Kenny worked the day shift, seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, five days a week. His work area was limited to the building lobby, the street-front just outside the building entrance, and occasionally the elevator bank if a tenant needed help with shopping packages. Radios, iPods, portable televisions, chats with friends and book reading were all prohibited while on duty. Fraternizing with the tenants was frowned upon—though there were a good number of young woman residents who Kenny would have loved to do some fraternizing with.
Gerard bounced into the lobby at exactly seven on that Thursday morning. The first thing he noticed was that Jim Bingham was absent from his post.
The large duty desk was an L-shaped affair, fronted by a tall counter which hid the desktop and all but the top of the head of a seated person. Kenny often used the cover of the counter to take in a few pages of a graphic novel or to struggle with the Examiner crossword puzzle.
The days were long and boring.
Kenny sometimes thought he might prefer the three to eleven shift, when there was more activity—tenants coming in from their jobs and going out on the town. Women were friendlier in the evenings than they were rushing away in the morning to their workplaces. But Gerard would rather have the day shift than the graveyard. Kenny pitied James Bingham. The poor bastard was stuck with nothing to do and not much to see from eleven at night until he was replaced at seven. And at seven, Bingham was usually standing right at the doorway itching to get away, waiting on Kenny Gerard like a member of a tag team race.
But not this morning.
And Kenny Gerard continued to wonder where Bingham was until he discovered James hidden behind the security desk.
Bingham didn’t look good.
First at the scene were two San Francisco patrol car officers who were closest when the call came in. Murdoch, a rookie, and Winger, a three-year veteran. The pair were affectionately known at the station as the tall skinny kid and whatshisname.
Kenny Gerard thought they appeared to be very young, and he was correct.
The two officers looked down at the body, which was stuffed under the desk between the counter and the chair. Only Winger had touched the body, and only long enough to check for pulse. James Bingham’s head sat at an angle to his torso that brought Linda Blair to Kenny Gerard’s mind, though he didn’t mention it.
“Do you think he slipped way underneath the desk and snapped his neck?” Murdoch asked.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Winger answered.
“Who do we call now—the forensic guys, the M.E., or homicide?”
“Call it in as a D.O.A., cause of death unknown,” said Winger. “Let them figure out who the hell to send.”
Darlene Roman did her laps around Buena Vista Park alone.
She missed having Tug McGraw running beside her.
Her best friend Rose and Rose’s husband were taking the kids up to Stinson Beach for a four-day weekend and the two little girls pleaded with ‘Aunt’ Darlene to let Tug go along.
Darlene couldn’t say no because the girls were just too cute and the dog loved the beach. Darlene had joined them for dinner the night before and she left Tug there with them when she left for home, so they could get an early start north in the morning. At the dinner table with Rose, Daniel, and the two girls, Darlene wondered how she would like a family of her own.
She often speculated, but never for very long. There was a lot about being free to be herself she was not willing to give up. Sometimes Darlene felt it could be a selfish reluctance. Most of the time she understood she definitely had it in her to love and comfort and be loyal and be compassionate and passionate, but she was far from ready to have anyone be wholly dependent on her and would never let herself be totally dependent on another.
Meantime, she did have her trusty pooch.
And she did have her fun.
Darlene jogged in place for a minute before skipping up the front stairs and entering her small house opposite Buena Vista Park.
Norman Hall stood across Roosevelt Way in the park and watched as Darlene Roman closed the front d
oor. Norman had been watching her jog around the park nearly every morning for more than a week. Hall sat down on a park bench and he stared at the house. He lit another cigarette and wondered where the dog was.
Sergeant Johnson was having one of his worst days in recent memory and it was not yet eight in the morning.
Things had actually been going downhill since the previous day. His wife had flown to Philadelphia in the afternoon. She was attending a big bash to celebrate her parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary on Saturday. Johnson politely declined the invitation to join her. He didn’t get along particularly well with his father-in-law. If he had to describe the man in two words they would be pompous ass. The man never missed the opportunity to insult Johnson, never blew a chance to remind his daughter she could have done a lot better choosing a husband. Johnson’s wife, Amy, came from Pennsylvania aristocracy—and marrying a police officer, the son of a San Francisco welder, was something her father and other members of her self-important dynasty could never understand. Even after the old man’s stroke, nearly eighteen months earlier, when for two months he could hardly speak, he managed somehow to articulate his lack of respect for his son-in-law and his disappointment in Amy for bringing someone so common into the family.
Rocky could only imagine what they all would think if they had known Johnson in his late teens and early twenties, when he ran with the Polk Street Pirates, a gang that plagued the neighborhood with an extended rash of vandalism and petty burglary. But, then again, to these people, being a cop was not all that different from being a thug.
Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3) Page 30