Telegraph Hill

by John F. Nardizzi

  “I would give it at least a few weeks, but can’t be certain at this point,” Ray replied. “I’ll run her name and date of birth just to see if something obvious pops up in the databases. Although I doubt that, based on what you said about a previous investigator not finding her. I can be in San Francisco by Tuesday. This will probably require some lengthy public records research there. I’ll need a retainer before I travel.”

  “That will not be an issue. What are your fees?”

  “$195.00 per hour. Plus expenses.”

  “You charge more than most investigators,” said Lucas.

  “I get results. Usually anyway. This is a humbling business. I stay in good hotels, nothing ridiculous though. Travel time is billed; half this job is waiting for the golden moment.”

  “I understand,” Lucas said, nodding. “I’ve taken clients to court to show them why I had to sit in a hallway while a judge conducts a motions hearing. But your fees will not be a problem. The client wants your best efforts and they expect to pay for it.”

  “I’ll send over an engagement letter,” said Ray. “I think a $10,000 retainer should be fine to start.”

  Ray handed Lucas a card. “I’ll wait to see the photo before I make any plans. As I mentioned, any personal identifiers such as a date of birth or even a green card number, that would be helpful too.”

  “Yes, thanks for reminding me. I’ll check on both points.”

  Lucas sat down at an antique desk in a corner of the room, where he jotted down some notes. Ray admired the oak wainscoting, honey colored and smooth. Lucas finished writing and stood up. He reached out his hand to Ray. “This client expects superior results. They always do. And that is why I called you. This type of case is probably routine for you.”

  Ray nodded. “It’s routine—until it’s not.” He smiled. It was tempting, but he wasn’t about to promise anything. Lucas stared at him for a moment, and then a tight smile crossed his face. “I look forward to working with you,” he said. The men shook hands, and Ray walked toward the door.

  Ray walked down the granite stairs and headed toward Beacon Street. He cut through the Public Gardens. Stands of willows arched over the swan boats as college kids paddled languidly through the dark green water. He strolled past expensive bistros and shops on Newbury Street, and walked into the brassy dusk of the Capitol Grill steakhouse. The show was on: the glasses sparkled, the bartender mixed drinks in a lunchtime fury, a busty waitress let select customers look down her blouse a little bit. He sat down in a window seat and ordered a rare steak with French fries.

  The meal came and Ray dug into the steak. He would have to thank Paul Artemis for referring him to Lucas. Personal recommendations were the touchstone on which the private world of lawyers relied. It would be a good case—defined as a riddle wrapped in a puzzle situated in an interesting locale. And backed with a sufficient budget. And while he was in California, he would personally undertake work on the Project, perform the necessary pruning. It was long overdue. This would be his first trip to the city in five years.

  Ray delved into the delicious rare slab of beef and watched the antics of the lunch crowd. Then he paid the bill and headed back to work.

  * * *

  Lucas watched as Ray headed down the street. He had not expected a cowboy, and he was pleased. He had heard a story from a colleague about this man. The trial lawyer had asked Infantino on the witness stand what he did for a living; Infantino had replied that he looked into people’s eyes to tell if they were lying. Laughs all around, and the jury loved it. Lucas suspected Infantino was only partly joking. Lucas knew what his client wanted: someone who had yet to rot in the suburbs, someone not easily denied. This was the guy.

  He called California from a disposable phone he used for three months and then tossed. The line was picked up.

  “Our investigator will be out there next week.”

  “Who is he?

  “Ray Infantino. Highly recommended for this sort of matter. Once he finishes his work, make sure you finish yours.”

  Chapter 3

  At Hunan House Restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Tamo sat back in his chair. The forty year old Shanghai native had a crude bulk that made other men step back despite his lack of height. An assortment of scars and cuts on his hands and neck were living mementos of a highly evolved violent streak. Tamo finished the last call and jammed the cell phone in his pocket. Damn thing was overheating. He picked at his dinner of spicy shrimp.

  The message came two hours before, and it was very clear: The bosses wanted the whore. And they wanted her now. She was a witness who saw something downtown and got out of the building before the job was done. Cops had picked her up, interviewed her. They couldn't take any chances.

  He filtered a slightly different version into the flinty night. The long reach of the Black Fist Triad came into play: photos passed, descriptions detailed, names and addresses reviewed. Kids selling newspapers on Kearny, the night clerk at the liquor store, bartenders, club kids, truck drivers, anyone of them could make an easy grand for a positive ID on the girl. She had taken something—speculation was money, but no one was certain—taken something that was not hers to take. That was the story. No one asked whose money, and no one asked how much. People seemed sensitive to the vibration. The triad was calling for justice for one of their own. When a tiger gets angry, the grass gets trampled. No one wanted to be the grass.

  Tamo now had over seventy men sitting on her apartment. The young bloods loved stakeouts. This was the private eye shit they saw in the movies. How good some of the kids were at surveillance, though, was open for evaluation. But what some of them lacked in experience, they made up in sheer numbers—that was why he had fourteen cars out there. The men parked at staggered points around the block. Four or five guys to a car, meandering around the neighborhood.

  He had three cars on Larkin Street, which had sunk into its customary vileness by 11:00 PM. Solitary men in hoodies dealt meth in the shadows of withered trees dying on the sidewalk. Suburban addicts drove around the block, nervous but desperate, risking it all for a one hour high. Transsexual hookers perched on street corners. A steady trail of cars rolled by with young guys ogling the tits and ass. A few triad soldiers razzed a Latina in red heels with enormous fake breasts bursting through her blouse. “Ass-smellin’ bitches!” she hissed. Billy didn’t take that shit from no man in a dress. He tried to get out of the back seat to bash her skull. The crew held him back, laughing crazily, high fives all around. The Latina stalked up Post Street. The men returned to watching the apartment.

  Tamo left the restaurant and had a beer at an underground card game near Stockton. So many tunnels had been dug in the basement that no one was sure anymore which building they were sitting beneath. By 1:00 AM, he was thoroughly pissed at the lack of news. He worked the cell again. He ordered dozens more soldiers into the Tenderloin, North Beach and Telegraph Hill, the bars near the Marina, downtown, SOMA, the Mission. The soldiers walked all night long, a scanned photo from some years back jammed in a pocket; others sat in cars watching the clubs empty out and compared faces to a photo set on the dashboard. Not perfect, but better than nothing. They scoured Chinatown and Nob Hill, driving slowly and ripping the streets with eyeballs. They drove up and down Broadway staring at any girl who fit the profile: Chinese, early 20s, pretty eyes, face as seen in the picture.

  No sign of Tania by the next morning. Another hour. No word by noon. Tamo smacked the table—how the hell do six hundred men not find this girl walking the streets? He made more phone calls, burning through the anger with sheer activity.

  “Get everyone out there. Roll out every dickweed by the carload!” All they wanted was one little whore.

  Chapter 4

  The sun was shining and joggers crowded the crumbling paths on the banks of the Charles River. Ray headed to his office in Cambridge, located on the top floor of an 18th century brick building near Harvard Square. Harvard College had been founded in 1756, the nation�
��s first men’s college. As the college’s elite reputation spread, the neighborhood outside its red brick walls grew with it. Some people thought the neighborhood had grown too much and lost its distinct flavor; it now resembled any other urban center. Ray strode past the few funky cafes and bookstores that refused to be shouldered aside as national retailers moved in, undaunted by rising rents. A crew of young punks at the subway station kept a wary eye on the upward mobility of the Square.

  Ray walked into his office. Bookcases lined the crimson walls. A Fiji mask hung near the door, grinning a razor smile, a crazed god watching over some forgotten crevice of the universe. His receptionist and editor, Sheri Haynes, sat at her desk in a sunny corner.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Hello Ray.” She stopped editing a report and looked up. “Nice shirt. Love that color.”

  “A question for you. The guy at Brooks said this color is mauve.” He pulled at his shirt. “I say lavender.”

  “It’s lavender, Ray. He’s color blind.”

  “We agree on something.” Ray poured a cup of black coffee, and sat down.

  “That attorney overnighted the retainer,” said Sheri. “For the case in California.”

  Glancing out the window at the street, Ray saw a man wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers with black dress socks cross Massachusetts Avenue. The man, probably a professor, soon disappeared behind the brick wall of Harvard Yard. Ray shook his head in disgust—denizens of Harvard had a polluted sense of style.

  He turned to a tidy pile of mail on his desk and opened a letter from Lucas Michaels. It contained a check written out for ten thousand dollars and two photos of Tania. A brief note listed Tania’s date of birth and Social Security Number.

  He looked closely at the photos. One was a close-up of an Asian woman with long black hair combed back and parted in the middle. Her skin was tan, darker than most Chinese, leavened as it was with Thai blood. Her eyes were set just a bit too close, so that she was bumped from the ranks of the beautiful into the merely intriguing— a far better category, in Ray’s opinion. Her face radiated an inquisitive intelligence. The second photo showed her thoughtful, unsmiling, holding her awkward teenage body slightly toward the camera. She was dressed in jeans with a white shirt that just showed a sliver of stomach. A note stated that the first photo was taken when Tania was twenty years old, while the second was taken when Tania was seventeen years old.

  Ray turned to his computer and ran Tania’s name and birth date through several locator databases. The databases were built on information from credit applications, phone records, real estate transactions, licensing records—the citizenry of the United States reduced to its essential numbers and sequences. Tania did not come up in any database. Ray guessed that she was using cash, flying low to avoid the radar.

  He looked down at his calendar, checking the schedule. No pressing meetings for the next few days. He worked mostly for lawyers, narrowly intelligent men who still wore suits on Fridays and tried to look older than they were. Serious faces for serious business. On their behalf he undertook the messy work of facts, of witnesses with criminal convictions and flawed memories. The thousand nicks and scars that make a human.

  They asked him to interview witnesses. They asked him to put people under surveillance. He had a modest army of surveillance operatives. Rich clients especially loved that aspect of investigations: a transitory omnipresence, watching your opponent’s daily rituals. They called on weekends, demanding constant updates. They wanted descriptions, auto makes, shoe sizes, and facial details. They wanted the name of the awesome blond. He once had a client in California who had requested that Ray keep an enemy under surveillance around the clock for two years. There was a beauty to such demented pursuits.

  He decided he would waste no more time in Boston. His personality was geared to projects, numbered lists. Check them off and the day is done. He devoted time to it, the detailed tasks in a notebook, the required follow-up. And now he had two projects in California.

  “Sheri, will you take this to the bank now?” He handed her the check. “I’m heading west.”

  “You’re off where?” she asked, coming to him and taking the check.

  “San Francisco.”

  Sheri stared at him. “Are you working on Cherry yourself?”

  “Partly,” said Ray. “The check covers other work actually.”

  She paused, an odd look on her face. “You ready to jump back into that?”

  “San Francisco is where I have to go. The path to a molten ending is made of a thousand cold steps.”

  Sheri adjusted her glasses. “What’s that from? Faulkner?”

  “That’s from me,” said Ray. Then he flicked on the computer and booked a flight to San Francisco.

  Chapter 5

  Head low, Tania skittered through the narrow, sun-blasted alley. It looked too open, a concrete shooting gallery. This place always made her nervous. But she had to get off Market Street. The wind ripped down from Twin Peaks, blowing newspapers against her leg.

  She pulled her hoodie close to her face. She looked like a homeless wreck, a huge ratty sweatshirt, old sneakers. She should cut off her long hair—too noticeable.

  Her friend lived in a gray house with a heavy steel door. She looked toward Mission and back to Market. No one was following. She took the key, opened the door and slipped inside. The door clanged shut behind her and she breathed out audibly.

  In the hours after the murder, she had been out of her mind with fear. She had left the hotel running but a cop stopped her after he saw her leaving the front gate. She sat in the car, and he took her downtown. As the cruiser pulled away, they were watching, three of them, staring at her through the glass. She told the cops nothing and got out few hours later, but the damage was done. She had survived the shooting and now they thought she was a snitch. A death sentence two times over.

  They would shoot her ten, twenty times, right in the neck and face. The girls called these kids the walking dead, because despite their youth, they harbored no hope, no feelings. The whole thing involved a different breed now, these kids, they planned nothing and just reacted, cyclone spasms of mayhem. Pulled from typhoid slums in China, they only wanted to live large for a few crazed years and then die like men. The triad promised them a life where both desires would be fulfilled.

  She had eaten almost nothing for days. She would shape shift and let hunger carve her appearance into something new, unrecognizable. She couldn’t eat anyway. Every goddamn guy that came near her.

  She remembered one story of a triad member who shot a guy from a motorcycle. He wasn’t sure if his mission was complete. That was the word the kids used—they went on missions. The guy stopped a motor bike in front of a crowd of people. Revved the engine and sent smoke into the crowd. Then he walked over to the kid lying on the street, bent down, and emptied the gun into his face. This was who they were sending after her.

  The night the men had stormed the hotel, two of them charging up the fire escape, they put a dozen bullets in her friend’s back. Jesus, the way one guy came in, calmly, methodically, like he was coming to fix the sink. Then he just unloaded everything at Cindy, the booming shots in the hallway, total chaos.

  She panicked and ran for her life. The sight of a girl running down the street half-naked did not arouse undue suspicion in San Francisco. She made it into some night club, just to get off the street. She had no money—Johnny got shot before he paid her. The club turned out to be some sort of S&M club. There were different floors with chains drilled into the walls and wood contraptions that looked like torture devices from a distant Spanish century. The lighting was dim, red, surreal. Smells of cigarette smoke, sweaty bodies, a desperate kind of lust in the air. Tomorrow, no one would remember she had been here; this was a place that erased memories.

  She walked through the cavernous club for the entire night, just killing time. At 4:30 AM, the place was dying down a bit. She found a huge hole in a wall, some abandoned exp
ansion project, downstairs in the basement. She slipped inside and cried herself to sleep. The club closed and no one bothered her.

  She woke up the next day, and slipped out the rear door while a beer truck unloaded. She was starving. Her teeth felt nasty. She needed a shower.

  She stopped by a store on the corner of Mission. Inside the grocery, an Asian kid alternated between reading a magazine and staring at her. Too long, she thought. Heart hammering her ribs. She paid for a candy bar and an iced tea, then walked outside, half-expecting the last view of her life would be the battered yellow doorjamb of this little store.

  Her foot hit the pavement. The second she was clear of the door, she started running.

  Chapter 6

  Ray chatted with an Ohio housewife sitting next to him on the plane. “That must be interesting,” she remarked upon learning he was an investigator. Everyone said that. Sometimes, sometimes not. Ray didn’t want to repeat any war stories, and grew quiet after the pretzels arrived. He watched the tiny houses below as the plane began its slow descent into San Francisco International Airport. Red salt ponds lined the coast to the south, while the city of San Francisco lay to the north.

  San Francisco, California. Where you went when no one on the East Coast was talking to you anymore. You traversed the country on a personal gold rush to show parents, childhood tormentors—everyone you ever knew— that something rare boiled inside you. An accident of geography lifted San Francisco into the ranks of sublimely beautiful cities. Sharply etched hills—Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, Nob Hill—offered sudden vistas of the blue Pacific, which drew the day to a close with a foggy gray curtain. San Francisco was rich, seductive, insatiable, demanding, and even after you saw her grimy face and wasted ways, you loved her like a woman—the endless promise of California.