Talk about your moody gangsters.
Angelique rose, motioned with her hand, and followed me out of the office.
We shared a silent elevator ride, her licorice scent tickling my nose pleasantly, and she stayed with me until we reached the massive revolving glass doors leading out of Pirate’s Cove.
I waved at her and said, “Bye,” not expecting a reply.
She said, “If I were you, I’d reconsider.”
I turned and looked back at her, but she’d already turned away. I watched her walk until she disappeared into the crowd near the blackjack tables. She moved gracefully, the motion of her voluptuous haunches a challenge and a dare echoing her words in my mind.
Two
After leaving Pirate’s Cove, I went home to Acapella Blues, a 42-foot houseboat, a re-imagined World War II lifeboat docked at the end of Pier 39 on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf where I faced a full day of long-deferred maintenance—washing, cleaning, painting, engine tuning, and general tinkering.
They say that when you own a house, upkeep is never-ending. That goes double if your house is situated on the water.
By the time the sun dipped toward the western horizon, my tasks were only half-done, but I was exhausted and ready for a nap in the hammock I sometimes unfurl on the bow. As I was about to do just that, my friend Marsh showed up with earthshaking news.
We sat on the back deck of the boat with plates of garlic broccoli omelets I’d whipped up and watched the sunset and the surrounding panoply—sailors tying up their boats after a long day fishing, the myriad activities across the way from Acapella at Beer 39, specializing in craft brews and beer tchotchkes. On the wharf, people were milling about the Eagle Cafe, hankering after a seafood dinner and behind that, The Hard Rock Cafe drawing a crowd.
At the end of the pier, at the Sea Lion Center, said mammals lolled in the dying light, their sharp barks punctuating the sunset’s bated breath air.
“You make a mean omelet, Plank,” Marsh said, after making quick work of my cooking.
I raised my coffee mug to him.
Marsh was two years younger than me and looked five. He had dirty blond hair and golden, unblemished skin. His eyes were steely gray, appraising life and all those living it with a cool, hard matter-of-factness. His body wasn’t overly muscled or bulky, but he was cut, lithe, and moved like a ballet dancer. He was a master of more esoteric martial arts than I had names for. He’d trained me, adding to my arsenal of basic but pretty effective moves.
“I’m getting married,” he said, staring at his empty plate.
I dropped my mug, and it rolled across the deck, clattering to a stop at the bulwarks. My mouth was probably gaping wide open.
Marsh is the most confirmed bachelor I know. He’d been seeing a younger man, Tom, for the past couple of years, the longest relationship he’s had since we met in our early twenties. He’d broken up with Tom several times, but they always got back on their emotional rollercoaster.
I didn’t know the M word was in Marsh’s vocabulary. It scared me a little because the M word is definitely not part of mine.
“What did you say?” I responded, dumbfounded.
He looked away, out toward Alcatraz Island, the prison turned hot tourist spot, about a mile away, with a frown on his face.
“Getting married,” he responded, his eyes still lost at sea.
“Wow,” I said.
He kept looking at Alcatraz.
“You seem overwhelmed with joy.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“You and Tom?”
He nodded.
“Great,” I said, trying to give my voice a happy lilt. “Congratulations.”
More stoic staring.
“Are you going to tell me?”
He took a deep breath through that noble Protestant nose of his and then let it out in a long sigh. “He asked me, and I said yes.”
“How romantic.”
“You’re best man.”
“I’m flattered.”
“This is hard enough without you being a smart ass.”
Wedding engagements are not normally made of such sweet sorrow.
“I’ll take it seriously when you tell me why.”
“Why,” he said and looked me in the eye. “Tom wants to. He’s asked me before. He doesn’t give up. What the hell. I’m forty now. Maybe it’s time. I like Tom.”
“Well, if you like him, then you should marry him, no doubt. How many men have you really liked before?”
“Plank.” He shook his head.
“Just trying to understand... You’ve always been even more down on the institution than me and that’s saying something.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“When is it?”
“If Tom gets his way, before Christmas. He has a thing about Christmas. The way he tells it, his childhood, in New England, was out of a fairy tale.”
“Well, they say opposites attract. Isn’t the best man supposed to plan the bachelor party?”
“Grow up.”
All children, except one, grow up, I thought.
I studied my friend for a moment and decided that something was bothering him, and it went beyond this marriage thing. But I knew Marsh, and until he was ready to tell me, I wouldn’t get any more information.
So I told him about my meeting with Poe.
“You said you wouldn’t have anything to do with the man after all that stuff with Frankie,” he said after I finished my summary.
“I’m not.”
“Sounds like if you weren’t going away, you would have taken it on.”
“I don’t know.”
“Something about him fascinates you. Intrigues you.” He paused, smiled. “Perhaps you just want to see more of Angelique.”
I realized both those statements might hold a smidgen of truth, heretofore unacknowledged. Marsh sometimes seems to be able to access my unconscious thoughts and motivations. It’s unnerving.
I shrugged. “Maybe I see it as part of keeping up with the crime scene in the city. He’s often at least tangentially involved, even if his fingerprints are never present.”
“I gather he was none too pleased with your soft refusal.”
“Pissed him off.” I told him about Angelique’s parting advice that I reconsider. “Not that I’m worried about what he might do, but could you look into this Bobby thing a little? Find out what the word is around the casino. And anything you can find about the thefts. He says it was over a million bucks. Angelique described it as gambling related, so there were cheats at blackjack, roulette, and poker with some dealers involved. He said he hasn’t reported it, which I don’t believe. He probably did, but the police are keeping it under wraps for him. Anything you can find out about Bobby or the missing money might help me decide in case he asks again after I get back from Hawaii.”
Marsh is wealthy and influential and connected as hell throughout the Bay Area and really, the country, if not the world. He has a large staff of top professionals, either directly on the payroll or a phone call away, not only involved with his various real estate enterprises but also throughout the city’s political and business and criminal trades.
He’d been special forces during part of the Afghanistan conflict and sometimes disappeared on what I assumed were covert missions initiated by some or other deep-cover government agency. He never talked about these activities. I don’t think he wants me exposed to the risks.
He also has genius-level computer hackers at his command, including the fair and brilliant Portia, who had helped me on cases several times in the past few years.
He has access to manpower and resources that we mere mortals can only dream of.
“I’ll see what I can see,” he said.
Then he got up without another word and left.
I sat there for a long while thinking about Bobby and Poe and Angelique and Hawaii and Alexandra, not necessarily in that order.
But what really stuck
in my craw was the fact that Marsh was somebody’s fiancé.
It was mind-boggling.
Three
I woke up with the soaring, squalling seagulls at half-past six, put on shorts and a black t-shirt—Springsteen and his guitar jumping in rock ‘n roll joy, and trudged out to the back deck barefoot.
I ran through my regularly prescribed forty-five minutes of yoga, alternating power yoga vinyasa moves with asanas heavy on joint stretching. Afterward, I sat in a double-seated pigeon pose for ten minutes, breathing in and out through my nose, pushing worldly thoughts away from my mind.
Didn’t work all that well. Sometimes it does.
As I was trying to attain a semblance of nirvanic calm, a woman’s voice interrupted. She was standing on the pier, watching me.
“Max Plank?” she said, in a high, wistful voice that matched her cherubic face.
I sat there all pigeon-posed and nodded.
“My name is Paula Fenderdale. Do you have a few minutes?”
The name rang a bell, and I struggled unsuccessfully to place the note. I nodded and waved her onboard, anyway.
We sat inside in my rustic little cabin. I’d redesigned the place over the past few months, or, rather, Alexandra and Frankie, with an assist from Meiying, my friend and neighbor living on a nearby boat, had all ganged up on me and forced some changes.
I didn’t mind. Interior decor is not exactly in my bailiwick.
And they hadn’t overdone the girly stuff. There were now more pictures on the gnarly wood walls—mainly photos from Alexandrea’s overseas assignments—giraffes and elephants in African grasslands, single-humped camels in Arabian deserts, pandas in Washington zoos, and pelicans with beaks full of fish right here in San Francisco Bay, along with some of Frankie’s school etchings and shots of scenic Fisherman’s Wharf. There was more seating: two new barstools, a cushy chair beside my old battered couch, re-covered in brown leather. An antique desk had been refinished and stained a dark walnut color and sat in a corner beneath the skylight. Everything else was rearranged, and just a tad tidier and cleaner.
It still seemed like a cozy place to hang your hat, keeping most of the down-home humbleness I liked.
I turned my attention to Ms. Fenderdale. From up close she still evidenced a skosh of the angelic, her auburn hair tied back flat against her skull and secured with a brass clasp. She had round cheeks and plump lips and a distinctive pug nose that seemed off center. Her eyes were large and shaded light blue. Her dress, a solid blue sheath, covered her from collarbone to ankles. The only decorations were a silver bracelet and a matching necklace. She wore no wedding ring.
She exuded a quiet but pronounced sensuality, something in the way she moved, in her eyes, that seemed barely contained.
I pointed at the cushy chair, and after she’d settled in, I plopped myself on one of the bar stools.
“Anything I can get for you before—”
“No, thank you, Mr. Plank. I want to get right to the point and then get out of your hair.”
That suited me, so I nodded and waited for her to embellish.
“You know my father, Bobby Fenderdale.”
The bell note chimed clear to me now. This was Poe’s niece, his brother’s daughter. Poe’s real name, which he’d shed many years ago during his westward voyage, was Lawrence Fenderdale.
“I didn’t know Bobby had a daughter your age.”
“My mom was his first wife. They were both nineteen. It only lasted long enough to have me. My mom raised me, but Dad stayed in touch.”
Bobby’d found two women to marry him. Stranger things.
“Did Poe send you?”
“No.”
“How did you find me then?”
“My uncle mentioned you, but he didn’t send me here. He told me he’d asked you to help find my father, but that you’d refused.”
“That’s correct. I’m afraid I’ll be out of town for a while, so it would be impossible for me to—”
“My father is in real trouble. If someone doesn’t find him soon. Within the next few days…” Her eyes welled up with tears, a single drop escaping, running down her cheek. She closed her eyes, clasped her hands in her lap, and breathed a calming breath out through her nose. “My uncle told me you are the best private detective in the city.”
As she gave me the full sympathy of her azure orbs, I wondered if Poe had really told her that, and if he did, whether he believed it.
I believed it, so wasn’t shocked when others recognized my skills.
In my trade, false modesty used to curry faint praise has no currency. That’s true of most lines of work, but when it comes to criminal or murderous shenanigans and their denouement, why bother?
“I don’t have much money, and I’m sure my uncle offered you more than I ever could.”
I slipped off the stool, went to my desk, and fingered through a Rolodex. I paused twice and wrote two names and phone numbers on a piece of notepaper. I returned to stand in front of Paula Fenderdale. “This isn’t about money. I’m just not going to be here for more than a week and so there’s no way I can help. There are other good detectives in the city. Here are a couple of names. They’ll do a good job for you.”
They weren’t Max Plank, but they were trustworthy, reliable, and diligent.
If you need a decent vacuum cleaner for a fair price, these two would do a reasonable job of sucking up your filth.
She didn’t look at me and didn’t reach for the paper in my hand. Instead, she wiped her eyes clear of tears, opened a small pocketbook, and removed a thin cellophane packet of pink Kleenex. She blew her nose, wadded up the tissue, and folded it back into the pouch.
“I didn’t really want to get into this, but I guess there’s no way around it.”
I stifled an exasperated sigh in mid-breath. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. “Ms. Fenderdale… Paula, I’m sympathetic, but there’s really nothing—”
“Please!”
Startled, I frowned at her. She didn’t exactly scream her plea, but it was only a note on the scale away from hysteria.
With trembling lips and hurried words, she said, “Please, please, just listen for a minute.” Her face was a mask of such anguish that only a heartless bastard could refuse her.
I considered it but turned and sat back down on the bar stool and nodded for her to continue.
“Thank you,” she murmured, gathered herself again with a deep inhalation. “My dad showed up unexpectedly at my apartment about a week from last Thursday. He’s never done that before. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of months.”
“How often do you normally see him?”
Why was I asking questions?
“Usually at least once or twice a month. We’re pretty close. We text every couple of days, just check-ins, and he calls me at least once a week.”
“Go on,” I said.
“He looked terrible. He seemed to have aged ten years in two months. I’d never seen him look so bad, even when he…” She looked away, out the porthole, biting her lip.
“Poe told me about his problems in the past with cocaine, said that he’d struggled for a while but was in recovery.” I followed her gaze out the porthole to the calm sea and beyond, images of Hawaii and Alexandra and me in idyllic and suggestive embraces fought for primacy over this poor young woman’s worry about her daddy.
“Yeah, he was. It had been more than a year since he’d had any. He smoked pot, but that was all. He’d been trying so hard, and it wasn’t easy. He didn’t want to disappoint his brother, who’d given him such a big chance to start over.”
I glanced back at her. She was looking at me with such earnestness, such yearning, that I had to look away. I have a soft spot for kitties and puppies and stray women, sure. I admit it. I don’t like kids or women being abused. Sue me. But nobody was being violated here. It was just another case of a man failing, not strong enough to overcome his weaknesses.
I’m not a therapist. My boat isn’t the si
te of a twelve-step program.
“So he was back on it?” I asked after she remained stuck in her head for longer than I was comfortable with.
“He said no. But I could tell, all the signs were there. He was hyper, he couldn’t sit still. His pupils were dilated.” Paula shook her head. “I don’t know if he’d just started up or if he’d been slipping up for a while. I’d guess it was very recent because my uncle would have noticed. He’d warned him, told him what he wouldn’t tolerate. When I met with him, my uncle said nothing about that, so I guess he didn’t know.”
Poe hadn’t mentioned that his brother had fallen off the wagon either. Still, this wasn’t a shock or a reason for me to step in.
“I’m sorry that your dad is still struggling, but—”
“That’s not the most important thing,” she hurried to say. “But it makes what he told me even more urgent. More dangerous.”
Despite myself, I said, “Tell me.”
“He said he’d gotten involved with some bad people. He said it was a long story, some guys he knew from years back when he was struggling with his ‘habit,’ as he referred to it. He said that these people had done him a favor and now, recently, had asked for a favor in return.”
“Did he say who these men were?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. Said the less I knew the better. He told me he didn’t have much of a choice. And he didn’t think it was a big deal, really. It had something to do with the casino. Dad said it was just in the past few days when he realized how they’d used him, how his favor had hurt the casino. He was afraid. Afraid of them and afraid of what his brother would do if he found out that Dad was involved.”
“It has to be the thefts, the game cheats that Poe told me about. Did he tell you anything about what he did, what the favor was?”
“No. Just that someone had fooled him. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. He was desperate, Mr. Plank. I think it made him go back on the coke because he thought there was no way out.”
Nothing forced him to shoot up, but I didn’t bother pointing that out to her.
“I told him to go to his brother and tell him everything. To explain what happened. I told him that my uncle would forgive him if he told the truth and explained how he hadn’t known, how he’d been fooled. My uncle isn’t a bad guy, and I know he loves Dad.”
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