I parked three blocks away. The ground level entrance to Jacks’ office was a door to a steep stairway. At the top was a long hall. No one was in sight. Down the hall I could hear the hum of voices and light from an open doorway laid a yellow rectangle against the grimy opposite wall. Jacks’ office was behind the first door, with windows on the street. The door itself was charred but sturdy, and the frosted glass window had been nailed up with plywood. The next door down was also boarded. Presumably the fire had spread that far before the fire department had put it out. The only other door in the hallway was the open one down and on the opposite side. I moved quietly down to see what it was. There was a hand lettered cardboard sign in the window advertising acupuncture. Hot needles off a sleazy hallway sounded about as appetizing as a back alley abortion, but the poor have pain as well as the rich.

The padlock on Jacks’ door was impressive, and so was the hasp. But whoever put it up hadn’t turned the screw plate back under the arm of the hasp. The screws holding it to the door frame were exposed.

I walked down to the hardware store and bought a screwdriver and a roll of masking tape. Five minutes later I had unscrewed the hasp. It was still attached to the door with the lock in place. I stuck the masking tape to the back of the screw plate to hold it in place and stepped inside, closing the door behind me. To a casual passer-by the door would look undisturbed.

Jacks office had been completely destroyed. The fire department must have come quickly to save the building, but this space was reduced to charred stubs of wall studding.  You could still tell that there had been two rooms. I was standing in a reception area and the far side of the burned out shell had been Jacks’ office, but the wall that had separated them was mostly gone. You could step through it any place.

Jacks had used a metal desk, the kind you buy as industrial surplus. It had survived the fire, barely. The ceiling was gone and the fire had cut through to daylight. There was a jagged, ten foot hole in the roof, which was fortunate since I hadn’t brought a flashlight and all the windows were boarded up.

I circled the room briefly, getting my bearings, then got down to business. I had to work quietly; beyond that, I was not worried about being disturbed. If my shadow enemy had an interest in this place, they would have searched it right after it burned. And if there had been anything worth finding, it was probably already gone.

On the floor behind the desk was a scattering of charred papers. I went through that first. The desk itself was empty, of course. I pulled the drawers and upended the carcass, looking for hideaways, and found nothing.

I was reasonably sure there was nothing to find, but I kept after it. Two hours later, I had turned over every spongy, black piece of debris twice, when I heard footsteps in the hallway. more tomorrow

“Here is the report on the Jacks investigation. There isn’t much more than I told you on the phone. He was killed execution style and dumped into the Bay. I know you think it was done by the same people you have been up against, but don’t count on that. Harvey was mean spirited, dishonest, and clumsy. I don’t know how he kept alive as long as he did. There must be three or four dozen people who would have happily put a bullet in his head. It may not have anything to do with your investigation at all.”

“For now, I’ll have to assume that it did. I told you he was investigating someone in Senator Cabral’s office. I now know that it was Alice Susyn Johnson, maiden name Davis.”

“Then you know more than I do. Jacks’ wife claimed to know no details of the investigation, although she knew it was going on. Apparently that was the way Jacks normally did business.”

“Because . . .”

“Bluntly, he was a blackmailer. He did investigations for hire just so he could find leads to develop. It made him rich, for all the good it did him.”

“Raven would not have known this.”

“Of course not,” Joe said. “She undoubtedly hired him in good faith, believed the report he gave her, and went on her way. Afterwards, Jacks put the squeeze on someone and started the train of events that put Raven in danger. But we don’t know who that person was, or what the nature of the squeeze was, or why Raven got caught up in a reaction that should have been aimed at Jacks alone.”

“Maybe he told his victim that he had sent information to Raven. Or maybe the victim found records of Raven’s hiring Jacks before he torched his office.”

“Possibly. But speculation is dangerous. You start thinking you know something when you are actually only guessing.”

“True. What about ballistics?”

“Probably a jacketed bullet. Probably 9 mm. It went in the back of his head and came out his nose. The bullet wasn’t recovered.”

“So, that leaves Jacks’ torched office and his wife.”

Joe agreed.

*       *       *

Joe keeps a stable of rough looking cars and pickups. They are never washed, and he has been known to dress them up with a sledge hammer and graffiti, but they all have fine tuned, oversized engines and new tires. He loaned me an ancient Pinto wagon. On the outside, it looked like a war orphan, but someone had shoehorned a rebuilt slant six under the hood.

I drove to Jacks office. It had been on the second story of a brick building in a block of brick buildings, in a neighborhood that was just holding its own against becoming a slum. Still respectable, but just barely. The storefront below his office was boarded up. There was an old style neighborhood pharmacy on one side, a hardware store on the other, and a liquor store down the street. The second story windows that faced the street were mostly blanked by shades or venetian blinds and some of them had gilt lettering advertising the businesses inside. Jacks’ windows were nailed shut with plywood panels. You could tell there had been a fire from the smoke trails that ran up across the bricks above each boarded window. more tomorrow

“The guy just pushed the knife into Talant’s throat until the blood started to trickle. I had to shoot him.”

“You were armed?”

“I had my old army .45 in a shoulder holster under a loose jean jacket. I was young and I wasn’t drawing attention to myself, so no one was looking at me. I shot the guy through the elbow. It was the only clear shot I had. It ruined him. He was never really able to use that arm again.

“The police came, and the ambulance, and Talant and I had to go down to the police station to make statements. They questioned us separately. It took hours, and when we were ready to leave, I asked Talant why he hadn’t used his famous piece. He said it wasn’t loaded. He had never fired it. He said he just carried it to ‘put the fear’ into people.

“It irritated me.”

Ed chuckled. “I should think so.”

“On the way back I pulled him into an alley and slapped him silly. Then I took his ‘piece’ away from him and told him not to show his face again. Last time I saw him, he was slumped against a dumpster with a glassy look and blood running down his face.”

I left Ed sitting on the couch and went to stare out the window again. I didn’t want to embarrass myself. Since Raven left, I had been holding my feelings tight inside. Now, in retelling the story of Talant, I had worked myself into a fine wrath. I didn’t want Ed to see my face, or the way my hands trembled.

Chapter Thirty

Ed dropped me off at Joe Dias’ the next morning, and went off to pursue some ideas of his own. He gave me a number to call, a couple of hundred dollars, and said he would be available if I needed help. Otherwise, I was on my own. It suited me just fine. I like Ed well enough, but I didn’t need a nursemaid.

Carmen was at her usual place in the reception room. When I first met her, she was cute. Pert. Not quite chubby. She had been growing an inch or two a year since then, and I don’t mean taller. Now she pretty much filled the space behind the desk.

“Hey, Stud, you’re looking good,” she said. “What happened? Job in Europe didn’t pan out?”

“Something like that. Is Joe busy?”

“Just paper work. Go on in.”

Joe looked up, then came around the desk to pump my hand. He was about five ten, wiry; his skin was like golden leather with laugh wrinkles on his face. His warm brown eyes had seen every kind of depravity during thirty years in a dirty business, and somehow remained human. 

The walls of his office were covered with framed pictures of his daughters, grandchildren, cousins, aunts, uncles, and every other known species of relative. He came from a huge extended family of Diases, mostly scattered around Livingston in the central valley. Joe’s grandparents had settled there early in the century after leaving the Azores. That section of California was practically a Portuguese colony, and Joe went back as often as he could.

In the years I worked for Joe, he had become a real friend. We took a while to update each other’s lives before we got down to business. more tomorrow

I went to the window. You could just see the bay if you leaned off to one side. The freight yard was at the end of a dead end street, backing up on a hundred yard wide tidal wilderness. On Sundays I used to go out and sit on a rock with a transistor radio to listen to the 49ers play. Candlestick Park was visible from out there, and every time Joe Montana made a touchdown, you could hear the cheering through the radio, echoed seconds later by the real thing from the stadium. Now the bay was only a lightless space in the twinkling city, and the only sounds were an occasional car and the barking of dogs.

Joe Montana doesn’t play in Candlestick any more, and I’m not in college any more, and the career that I spent a decade preparing for may well be over before it has a chance to begin.

“Do you have a gun?” Ed asked.

“The one I own is in Marseilles.” Then I went over to the bookcase, shoved some books aside, and pried up a loose baseboard. I brought a cigar box over to the table and took out a snub nosed Bulldog. “This one isn’t registered. Or, rather, it isn’t registered to me.”

“Stolen?”

“Technically – I suppose so. I took it off a guy after I beat the shit out of him.”

Ed smiled and asked, “Anyone I know?”

“No. A guy I worked with. A P.I. named – Talant, I think. He had worked for Joe Dias about three months when I had been there about two years. I had been doing leg work and computer searches when Joe sent me out to get some seasoning. I went with this Talant one day on an investigation. We were looking for a bail jumper. I don’t remember his name, and we never did find him. 

“All day long, Talant went around the city chasing down the jumper’s associates to question them. The man was a complete ass. He tried to bully everyone he talked to – including me – and whenever he questioned anyone, he always managed to let his coat hang open so his gun would show. He called it his Son-of-Sam piece. That story had just broken and it was the same kind of handgun that David Richard Berkowitz had used.

“Anyway, Talant finally cornered the wrong man. He was trying to bully this guy he was questioning in a bar in Daly City, getting in his face and calling him a liar because he said he didn’t know where our jumper had gone. He kept patting his piece, trying to make it look casual and threatening at the same time. 

“The guy he was questioning just didn’t give a damn. He jumped up from the table where he’d been sitting and whipped a knife out of his boot, and before Talant knew what hit him, the guy had the knife at his throat.

“Talant froze. And then he started to bluster, and when that didn’t work, he started to beg. The guy just pushed the knife into Talant’s throat until the blood started to trickle. I had to shoot him.” more tomorrow

“We should talk about him some time.”

I handed Ed a cup of coffee and said coldly, “No, we shouldn’t.”

He smiled slowly and said, “Well, maybe not.”

“Why do you care, anyway?”

“Habit. I need to know everything. Even things that are none of my business. I’m always getting in trouble over that.”

I could get to like this laid back FBI agent. He had loyalty and an odd way of looking at life. But I wasn’t going to tell him about my past just because he was likable.

Ed sipped and leaned back. “So you got discharged and spent three months wandering around Europe. Then you came to San Francisco. Why?”

“Did you ever live through a Wisconsin winter?”

“No. But I get your point.”

“I had met my Aunt Adele a few times when I was a kid, and I liked her. She was about the only relative I had left, so when I was in Germany I started writing to her. She invited me out. I’d gotten my GED while I was in the Army and wanted to go to college, so she put me up here and gave me this job. She paid my tuition, but I worked for the rest.”

“How does Joe Dias fit into all this?”

“I met him through Rusty Dixon. Joe and I both fire at Rusty’s pistol range. I was complaining about the price of Rusty’s reloads, so he introduced me to Joe. I went to work for him a few hours a week for spending money.”

“How long were you a P.I.?”

“I wasn’t – exactly. Joe called me three-quarters of a P.I.. I went to work for him in 1982. There weren’t many computers around then, and I had learned how to use one in the Army, so I started out doing computer searches. Eventually, I did everything, but it was never a profession with me, just a job. It was exciting sometimes, and it paid OK, but mostly I was interested in college.”

“How long?” Ed prompted.

“I can’t say, exactly. It was off and on. There were months when I wouldn’t see him at all, and times when I would work for several weeks straight. He let me work around my college schedule. I had a pretty tough time at first, and Joe was always understanding.”

Ed didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look bored either. He had the knack of drawing you out, making you want to explain further.

“A GED is no real substitute for High School.  My junior year was a disaster after my Dad ran off and I was trying to raise my sister. Then I missed my senior year altogether. When I got to college, I made really bad grades at first. It took me a while to learn how to learn. Then I had to retake some classes to get my GPA up so I could get into grad school. It took me a long time to get my M.A..” more tomorrow

The window groaned when I opened it, letting in the night fog to ease the stuffiness of the place.

“You live here?”

“Seven years.”

“Why? Did you take a vow of poverty?”

“I never had to take a vow; I was born to poverty.”

“Your dossier said you have a rich aunt?”

“Adelle Wilson. She owns Grayling Motor Freight. This isn’t it. Its a big complex in Oakland. This is just a little outfit she bought out about the same time I came to San Francisco, which she runs as a local annex to the main business. I needed a job and a cheap place to live; she gave me this room and a job as a night watchman. It was ideal. No rent to pay, a small salary, and all I had to do was be here from ten at night to six in the morning. I made rounds a couple of times a night and responded if an alarm went off. Otherwise I could study or sleep.”

I pulled the blanket off the mattress and whipped the room with it. For a minute, the dust filled the air, but cross ventilation carried most of it out the window and made the place more habitable. Ed Wilkes sank down on the sofa while I went through the cupboards and found an unopened can of coffee. I set water to boiling. “If you want to stay here tonight you can sack out on the sofa. I have a sleeping bag you can use.”

“OK. We need to make some plans.”

I plugged in the ancient refrigerator and put water in some ice cube trays. “Excuse me while I’m being domestic,” I said. “The place isn’t very complicated. I’ll have everything that matters running again in a minute.”

Ed looked around and shook his head. “Seven years?” he said.

I filled the filter cone with coffee and poured in boiling water. “Yes. You read my state department documents, so you know that I dropped out of high school to enter the Army.”

“At age sixteen.”

“I was only a month shy of seventeen and those days the Army was pretty unpopular. It was only a short time after Viet Nam. You could still get in if you were upright and breathing.”

“Fake ID?”

“Homemade. It wouldn’t have worked if the recruiter hadn’t had a quota he couldn’t fill.”

“You were in the Army three years out of a four year enlistment. You went out on a medical discharge. How is your knee these days?”

I looked at Wilkes. He was amused. No doubt he had some idea of the truth. I said, “As good as can be expected.” 

There was nothing wrong with my knee; never had been. And I was sure Ed knew that.

“How is Sgt. Davenport?”

He knew.

“Still in prison, as far as I know. I haven’t had any contact with him since I last saw him in Germany.”

“We should talk about him some time.”

I handed Ed a cup of coffee and said coldly, “No, we shouldn’t.” more tomorrow

The adrenaline rush had washed all the doubts out of my system, and that took me back.

When I was eight years old, there had been a fire in a house on my block. As soon as I smelled the smoke, I ran there, cutting across back yards and jumping fences. It was an old abandoned house; I can still remember the raw disappointment when I realized there was no one for me to heroically rescue. I crawled under the shelter of a lilac bush to where I could feel the heat of the blaze and watched the flames and smoke. I stayed there until the backwash from a fire hose caught me and washed me out, wet and embarrassed as a kitten in a rainstorm.

There are men who live for quiet and security, and men who live from crisis to crisis. I have always been one of the latter.

So why had I applied to the State Department to be a junior officer in an embassy, a job about as exciting as being a clerk at Macy’s? Because the other half of me was the abandoned child who wanted to be accepted and respectable. There is not much respectable about a private eye. But it was probably a mistake to think I could give up the rush.

*       *       *

A layover in Dallas meant a morning arrival in San Francisco. I watched the Nevada desert give way to the crumpled mass of the Sierras, which then graded out too oak dotted foothills and the vast, hot, flat, green expanse of the San Joaquin Valley. When we crossed the Coast Range, we were too low to make out its true shape and then the bay area was spread out beneath us like a map.

It was home. I had lived here for years, but until now, coming back after seven months absence, I hadn’t realized that it was home.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The street ended at an iron and hurricane fencing gate. Beyond was a parking lot, mostly empty, and a warehouse with the Grayling Motor Freight logo on its concrete block side. At the side of the gate was a call box holding a simple push button which I rang. A few minutes later the guard came out. I didn’t recognize him.

“What do your want?”

“I’m Ian Gunn. Even though I don’t know you, someone should have told you about me.”

He shone a flashlight in my face, and grunted. “Yeah,” he said, “they showed me a photograph. Got any ID?”

I showed him my passport. “I also have a key, but I didn’t want to get shot.”

“Yeah.” He opened the gate. “Who’s the other guy?”

“A friend of mine.”

“Look, I was told to let you in, but . . .”

“Don’t push it.”

He decided not to. Ed followed me across the parking lot while the guard relocked the gate. I still had a key to the building, too, so I let us in after I had turned off the alarm.

“Are you going to tell me what is going on?” Ed asked.

“Sure. This is where I live. Come on up.”

The hallway inside skirted the main office and led by a narrow stairway to an upper room. No one had touched it since I left. There was a layer of dust on everything, from the Salvation Army couch, to the battered desk, to the mattress in the corner, to the dust cover on my Macintosh computer. My old bike was hanging upside down from its hooks and acres of bookcases still spilled their excess onto the floor. more tomorrow