“The hell with that,” I said. “Go ahead and get on it. I’ll let you know if there’s any news about Tamara.”
The trip to the East Bay was a waste of nearly two hours.
The San Leandro neighborhood Tamara had been staking out was lower middle class and early-afternoon quiet. There was no sign of Horace’s red Toyota on the 1100 block of Willard Street, or anywhere else on Willard or within a four-block radius. I parked in front of number 1122, the house where deadbeat George DeBrissac might or might not be hiding out, and went and rang the bell and got no answer.
Start ringing other doorbells? Bad time for it. Most of the residents were away at work or out shopping; Tamara had been here after dark, so anybody who might’ve seen her might not be home until after dark. Better to wait until tonight, if it came down to that.
So I drove back to the city and South Park. It was just three o’clock when I got off the elevator in front of the new offices.
Still no Tamara, still no word from her.
Time, past time, to start making some calls. I decided on a compromise where her family was concerned. If there was a serious problem and her family knew about it, I was pretty sure somebody would have let me know by now. And I didn’t want to sound an alarm to them yet. Her father was a Redwood City cop, overprotective and none too keen about her choice of profession, even less so after that close call last Christmas; they had a prickly relationship, and he and I had never been more than civil to each other. He’d be in my face from the get-go. And if it turned out the absence had a simple explanation, I’d have Tamara’s disapproval to deal with as well.
So I made my first call to her sister Claudia, a lawyer with the public defender’s office. Tamara was out somewhere, I said, and I was trying to locate her. Had Claudia heard from her today? No, Claudia hadn’t. Like her sister, she was a sharp young woman; there must have been something in my voice that she picked up on, because she asked immediately if anything was wrong. I gave her an evasive answer and got off the phone by pretending I had another call.
We had an office Rolodex file of names and addresses that included some personal contacts, among them Tamara’s closest friends. Lucille Cranston hadn’t spoken to her in several days. I couldn’t get hold of Deanne Cotter. The third call, to Vonda McGee at the Design Center, produced some results.
“Well, yeah,” Vonda said, “I talked to her last night.”
“In person or on the phone?”
“Phone.”
“She call you or you call her?”
“I did, on her cell.”
“What time?”
“I think… around eight or so.”
“Where was she? San Leandro?”
“Didn’t say. We only talked for a couple of minutes. She kind of blew me off.”
“Is that right? Why?”
“Said she couldn’t talk, she was on a job. She sounded a little weird. Off the hook.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Like she was messed about something.”
Young people and their slang. “Upset? Scared?”
“Not scared. Just sort of heavy-duty stoked.”
“Does that mean excited?”
“Yeah. Not all there, you know? Off the hook.”
“Distracted. Tensed up.”
“Right.”
“What was bothering her, she give you any idea?”
“No. Well, she said something about dealing with a half-and-half, same as I am.”
“Half-and-half?”
“Half black, half white,” Vonda said. “See, I’m dating this guy, a white guy who’s also Jewish, and he’s getting serious, he wants to meet my people and they’re not too cool about the mixed-race thing. So I called Tam to-”
“Did she give you a name, say anything at all about this half-and-half?”
“Just that she was dealing with him.”
“Him. A man.”
“I guess so. That’s the impression I got.”
“Somebody she met and was attracted to?”
“No, not like that. Horace is her man, only man she wants.”
“Some guy who hit on her, kept bugging her?”
“Uh-uh. Didn’t sound like that either. She’d’ve said if it was a sex thing.”
“What do you think she meant by ‘dealing with him’?”
“No idea,” Vonda said.
“Did it sound like an immediate thing-a situation she had to deal with then and there, wherever she was?”
“I’m not sure. That’s all she said. Well, except that race doesn’t always have to be an issue. Be nice if that was true. Then she said she’d call me later, we’d talk then, and cut me off.”
“But she didn’t call you back.”
“Uh-uh. Not last night, not today. Funny-when Tamara says she’s gonna do something, she always does it. You know?”
“I know,” I said.
“How come you asking me all these questions anyway? I mean, why don’t you just ask Tam?”
“She’s been out of the office all day. I’m trying to find her.”
“… Nothing wrong, is there? I mean-”
I said, “I hope not, Vonda. Thanks for your help,” and rang off.
I went and got the DeBrissac file again. As I remembered, he was down in there as a “male Caucasian.” To make sure, I put in a call to the Ballard Agency in Portland. They verified it: George DeBrissac was Caucasian, his ex-wife was Caucasian, and that made it pretty likely the cousin who owned the San Leandro house was Caucasian.
So was this half-and-half part of the “something that went down” on Monday night that’d bothered her enough to do some checking? What had she meant by “dealing with him”?
And the big question: Did he have anything to do with her sudden disappearance?
15
JAKE RUNYON
Paul Venner, Troy’s lover who worked in the Castro leather shop, wouldn’t talk to him. Venner was in his twenties, had orange spiked hair and a tattoo of a scorpion under his right ear and a muscled body encased in black leather pants and an orange T-shirt with the words QUEER POWER emblazoned on the front; he wore his hostility toward both heterosexuals and cops like another motto on the sleeve. He stonewalled every question Runyon put to him by saying aggressively, “No comment. Buy something or get out, you don’t belong here” or “Hey, you’d look good in cowhide and chains” or “How about a fur-lined jock strap, they’re on sale this week.” Runyon didn’t bite on any of it. Nothing ever showed on his face unless he wanted it to, and he showed Venner nothing but a flat stare the entire five minutes he was in there. When he said, “You’d better watch yourself, kid, or you’ll end up in the hospital like the other three victims,” and got another smart-ass comment in return, he walked out. The Paul Venners of the world, the hard-line haters, the self-involved screw-everybody-else jerks gay or straight, deserved whatever they got.
Another visit to Jerry Butterfield’s house-a refurbished post-1906 earthquake cottage with an add-on garage-also bought him nothing. Still nobody home. On the back of one of his agency business cards he wrote his cell-phone number and a brief call-me-it’s-important message, and wedged the card into the doorjamb above the lock. If he didn’t hear from Butterfield by seven or eight tonight, he’d follow up again himself.
Next stop: Hattie Street.
Keith Morgan was fifty or so, heavyset, sad-eyed. Lines and wrinkles calipered a small mouth, scored his cheeks and neck; even his head beneath a sparse combing of brown hair showed faint furrows. His first-floor studio apartment in the big, blue Victorian was dominated by framed photographs of a thin bearded man alone and in candid shots with Morgan, and prints and lithographs of dogs of one kind and another. A live dog, old and shaggy, of indeterminate breed, followed its master everywhere and never left him alone; it showed no interest in Runyon. Cataracts made its eyes look like blobs of milky glass.
Morgan had no problem with Runyon being straight or a detective. He listened to a brief explanation for the visit, nodded, showed him into the apartment, turned off a TV tuned to a noisy talk show, offered him something to drink, and then sat in a creaky recliner with the blind animal at his feet. The room smelled of dog and some kind of food with a lot of curry powder in it.