“And?”
“Married, three kids — two of ‘em with the present wife. Third’s the boy he had with Byers. So I called him up at work, said I was a reporter for the Chronicle and had he seen Byers recently and did he have any idea where she might be.”
“Took a chance doing that. What’d he say?”
“Got real upset. Knew she was wanted by the law, but what’d that have to do with him? Said he hadn’t seen the bitch in years, didn’t want nothing to do with her, don’t call him again or he’d sic his lawyer on me and the paper both. Sounded scared to me.”
“You think he might’ve been lying?”
“Hiding something, maybe. Hard to be sure over the phone, you know what I’m saying?”
“Worth talking to in person?”
“Might be, but Woodland’s a long way from here.”
“Only a couple of hours. What else did you pick up on him?”
“Not much. Your model citizens, him and his wife both. Melanie’s her name. No criminal records, one speeding ticket for him five years ago. Belong to the Methodist Church, the PTA, Greenpeace.”
“If he’s that clean,” I mused aloud, “what was he doing with a screwed-up crankhead like Byers?”
“Maybe she wasn’t into drugs when he knew her. And you know what they say about a hard-on.”
“Yes, and I don’t want to hear you say it. What’s Johnson’s home address in Woodland?”
She consulted her computer screen. “Seven-ninety Rio Oso. Work address: RiteClean Plumbing and Heating, twenty-six hundred Benson Avenue. Also Woodland.”
I wrote down the addresses. While I was doing that, the phone rang again. Tamara answered, listened, indicated with her hand that the call was for her.
The Yellow Pages were still spread open on my desk blotter. As I pocketed my notebook, one of the large ads caught and held my eye — and the tickling sensation returned. The ad itself had nothing to do with it. Something else...
Got it. Quickly I flipped pages. There were only three listings under the letter V: Valley Relocation and Storage, Vector Transportation, and Viselli Van and Storage. I smacked my fist down on the page.
Dingo 4.15 V.V.S.
V.V.S. — Viselli Van and Storage.
It was a medium-size place, three stories and truck yard that covered half a block at the foot of Potrero Hill. Dot-com firms had gobbled up some real estate in the area, but the pocket here was still blue-collar industrial by day, a meeting ground for hookers and their johns at night. Business at Viselli Van and Storage must be pretty good; they had an office staff of half a dozen. The one I talked to was a Mrs. Lupinski, a pinch-faced woman in her fifties with gray hair so stiff-looking it might have been lacquered and gold-framed eyeglasses dangling from a silver chain.
“I’m looking for a man who might be employed here,” I told her. “An Australian who goes by the nickname Dingo.”
The name was like a squirt of lemon juice: her mouth puckered with instant distaste. “What do you want with him?”
“He does work here then?”
“He did until last week, and I don’t mind telling you I’m glad he’s gone.”
“When last week?”
“Thursday.”
“Quit or fired?”
“Fired, and rightly so. He started a fight with one of our customers. A fistfight, no less, without any provocation. Are you with the police?”
“Not exactly. Why do you ask?”
“Drugs,” she said, lowering her voice. The pucker grew even more pronounced. “He’s a drug addict. Did you know that?”
“Yes, ma’am.” On drugs, probably, and already out of control when he started the fistfight. It hadn’t been much of a step from that to crossing the line into cold-blooded murder. “What’s his real name?”
“His name?”
“I know him only as Dingo.”
“Manganaris,” she said as if it were a dirty word. “Harold Manganaris. Harold is a perfectly good name, but he hated it. He insisted everyone call him by that silly Dingo.”
All right. Harold Manganaris. All right.
“Would you spell the last name, please.”
She spelled it. “He has a foul mouth, too,” she said. “You should have heard some of the things he said to me, to other women here. He should’ve been fired long ago. Long ago.”
“Would it be possible for me to see his personnel file?”
“Oh, no, that isn’t allowed.”
“Well, could you at least give me his home address? And the names and addresses of any relatives? Please, Mrs. Lupinski. It’s very important.”
She glanced around as though she were afraid someone might be eavesdropping. Then she said conspiratorially, “Just a minute,” and went away to her desk for a little time. When she came back she half-whispered a street and apartment number on Duboce.
“Relatives, next of kin?”
“None. He provided only the barest facts. He shouldn’t have been hired in the first place, if you ask me.”
“Did he have any friends here? Anyone he worked with regularly?”
“No. He’s not the kind of man who makes friends. Everyone here disliked him, no one wanted to work closely with him. Even Mr. Viselli disliked him. I can’t understand why he wasn’t fired long ago.”
I thanked her, and she said as I turned to leave, “He belongs in jail. I mean it, that man really should be in jail.”
Sooner or later, Mrs. Lupinski.
Sooner or later.
The Duboce address was a rundown apartment hotel a couple of blocks west of Market Street, within hailing distance of the massive and deserted U.S. Mint building — the kind of place that you know as soon as you walk in has rodent, roach, and heating problems. It was also a dead end. I had conversations with a beady-eyed little guy who called himself “the day man,” and an elderly tenant who was hanging around the lobby because “I ain’t got nothing better to do.” They both knew Dingo; they didn’t like him any more than Mrs. Lupinski had. He’d lived in the building for close to two years, alone in a single room, and moved out ten months ago. No forwarding address, naturally, since he hadn’t bothered to notify Viselli Van and Storage of his change of residence. Kept to himself, hardly spoke to the other tenants — “Snotty son of a bitch when he did say something,” the elderly gent volunteered — and seemed not to have spent much time on the premises. Friends: none. Visitors: none that either of them could recall.
You’d think that somebody with an uncommon name like Harold Manganaris would be easy enough to run a background check on, but that’s not necessarily the case. Variables, any number of them, make every BG check different. Some take a few hours; others take days, even weeks. There may be an unlimited amount of of data available on what Tamara calls “the information superhighway,” but finding it, accessing it, cross-examining it, and fitting it together can be a chore even for a computer hacker with her skills.
I’d called her as soon as I left Viselli Van and Storage, so when I got back to the agency at 3:50 she’d been running Manganaris for about an hour and a half. That was enough time to pull together a workable preliminary package — if the variables were few and favorable. But they weren’t. When you want something badly enough, the universe being the perverse place it is, that’s often the way things shake out.
Tamara wagged her head and said, “No luck so far. I accessed public and CJIS records and most of the Bay Area phone directories. Nobody named Manganaris listed anywhere, no record of birth or marriage, no county, state or federal criminal record or outstanding warrants. Man’s never been arrested, at least in California.”
“Lucky until now. What about the DMV?”