“Ah... do you know where I might find Romeo now?”
That’s when Chuckie started to cry.
As the AIDS threat became old hat because new and more powerful drugs were prolonging sufferers’ lives, attractive young gay males with no sense of history started a new party craze in the Castro District. They assembled at someone’s apartment with the understanding they had to leave three things at the door: their clothes, their condoms, and all talk of HIV.
Romeo became addicted to such gatherings, and at one met “a simply devastating” — Romeo’s very own words — older man, a doctor recently retired from U.C. Med Center. Just like that, Romeo had gone to live on the medico’s big estate down in the very expensive Peninsula community of Woodside.
“The Marcoses used to have a home there,” said Chuckie in a wistful voice as he dried his tears.
“If the shoe fits...” began Bart, decided the joke was too obscure, unthinkingly added, “and now Romeo lives there.”
More boo-hoos. Bart felt like shedding some salt himself when he checked out Chuckie’s gold address book that had a lascivious Proteus frolicking with some suspiciously male-looking nymphs on the cover. The doctor’s name and Woodside address were smeared over with black ink. All Chuckie could remember was Herbie-something on — could it really be? — Bare-Something Road. Or maybe, he giggled, it was on Bare-Everything Road.
Bart tried U.C. Med Center with his cell phone, got told by Personnel that they never gave out the names or addresses of anyone who worked there or had ever worked there or might be contemplating working there in the future.
He called it in to Giselle for some skip-tracing. Perhaps because she had an M.A. in history from S.F. State, she took the long view of the Castro District’s heedless gay sex parties. It was the doomsday scenario, she told Bart, and then launched into a psychological explanation that to him explained nothing.
When she ran down, Bart said, “The last millennium ended with a whimper so I’m going to do the same to start this one?”
“Exactly! Fin de siècle. In 1900 tuberculosis — what they called consumption then — was the romantic death. In Y2K it’s AIDS. Up two-point-three percent in San Francisco.”
“Yeah, romantic as hell. But you’re still just as dead. Now, how do we go about finding Dr. Herbert-Something?”
Giselle giggled. “Bare Something... maybe Bare Mountain?”
“Naw, that’s Bald Mountain and it’s in San Anselmo.”
“Come take me to lunch, Bart, I’m getting cabin fever. I bet I’ll have something for you by the time you get here.”
Though DKA had long since entered the computer age, Giselle immediately came up with one of the old standbys she still secretly preferred: the crisscross directory that listed by address rather than name. She had it by the time Bart arrived.
Herbert Greer, M.D., 72 Bear Gulch Road, Woodside.
Now, to find out whether Romeo, his Romeo, really wert in Woodside. Or rather, if the Ferrari wert. After dark for that.
Lulu picked up the ringing phone and musically told it, “Ted’s TV Repair, if it ain’t broke, we can fix it anyway.”
The strong, rich, well-known voice of Willem Van De Post said in Romani, “Lulu! How is my favorite aunt?”
Lulu chuckled. “Me ávri pçándáv čoreskro báçht! — I tie up the thief’s luck!” Then she added, “It must be very late in Rome. How is Stanka? How are the little ones?”
“Not so little. Rita runs an office here a Roma and is planning marriage, Nani will graduate from university in June, and Giuliezza just started her first year at Bologna.”
“University,” Lulu said disparagingly. “And marriage to a gadjo, I bet! You are ruining those children.”
“Times change, Aunt Lulu. To be Rom in Europe right now is a hazardous thing.” He lowered his voice. “Is Staley there?”
Staley was in the shop, selling three VCRs that had fallen off a truck right in front of a fellow Muchwaya the night before.
“This is Ted.”
“I have information best given in person. I will come to California. We must meet discreetly. It is all very delicate.”
When he heard Willem’s voice, Staley switched instantly to Romani and leaned closer to the phone, even though the two gadje buying the VCRs couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
“The zoo is always a safe place to meet.”
Willem laughed. “You have a sly mind, uncle.”
They set the day and time, then Staley hung up and met the inquisitive eyes of the men buying VCRs at a price that made it obvious they were hot.
“What was that lingo you was using?” asked one of them.
“Arabic. My people are originally from Lebanon. My nephew want to borrow money.” He chuckled merrily. “Is what relatives are for — to borrow money.”
Nine
Heslip was buying Giselle lunch at a new fancy SOMA restaurant. Ballard was dropping off the Wiley Corvette at the Cal-Cit Bank storage lot below Telegraph Hill. And salty old repoman O’Bannon was across the Golden Gate getting himself lost while searching for an UpScale salesman named Timothy Bland. Lost in the Marin County community whose local fire truck he had once repossessed for a truck-sales company. Oh shame! Oh woe!
Bland was supposed to be living on Toyon off Currey. What could be simpler, even on Tam Valley’s steep, heavily wooded, impossibly twisty house-crammed streets?
Except Currey Avenue didn’t intersect with Toyon after all. O’B decided, after a lot of map study, that Toyon came off Currey Vista. It didn’t. Then it had to come off Currey Lane. No, Currey Lane came off Currey Vista.
So Toyon had to come off Curry Vista. It did. Except its street numbers didn’t come anywhere near the number Ken Warren got from Benny Lutheran of the broken nose. But on a narrow blacktop lane called Toyon Court that dipped discreetly downhill off Toyon, O’B found the number he had been given for Tim Bland.
It was a two-story redwood duplex clinging to the downhill side of the street with steel fingernails. The concrete floor of the empty double carport beneath the duplex wore an encouraging puddle of oil. A classic would lose more oil than a new car.
Nobody home at Bland’s lower apartment. Nobody home upstairs, either, except a grey and white tabby cat O’B could just hear meowing through the double-glassed front door.
Work the neighborhood, ask questions of everyone in sight. Except there was no one in sight, and Tim Bland could be driving any one of the seven missing classics — or none of them.
Pardon me, sir, I’m looking for a guy driving a car. Sure.
The next house downslope was a typical California hillside cantilever: the carport on the roof and the bedrooms in the basement. An old woman with mad eyes held up her cell phone just inside the door and repeatedly pantomimed punching 911.
O’B went away. She’s somebody’s mother, boys, you know.
The next cookie in the jar was a heavyset guy who answered the door in mid-afternoon wearing only morning breath. He would never star in a porno flick, that was for sure.
“Yeah, whadda fuckya wan’?”
“I’m trying to get in touch with Mr. Bland—”
“Earn a hones’ livin’ you come aroun’ knockin’ on my door.”
“Could you tell me what kind of car Mr. Bland—”
“Push a hack nights, pay my taxes, don’ beat th’ wife.” Wife? Loneliness could do strange things to a woman. “Summich sold me a lemon of a Honda once. Summich ain’t home.”