She scoffed. “No offense taken. EPA... Doesn’t that confuse everybody? It’s really north of the other Palo Alto. Place so far on the wrong side you couldn’t even hear any train whistle. Your father liked his cowboys. Well, this was Tombstone back in the day. Highest murder rate in the country.”
“In Silicon Valley?”
“Yessir. It was mostly black then, thank you, because of the redlining and racial deed restrictions in SV.” She chuckled. “When I was growing up here, there was gunfire every night. We kids — I have three brothers — we’d hang out in Whiskey Gulch. Stanford was dry and didn’t allow any liquor within a mile of campus. And what was one mile and one block away? Yep, a strip mall in EPA, with package stores and bars galore. That’s where we’d play. Until Daddy came looking and dragged us home.
“’Course, the Gulch all got torn down and replaced with University Circle. Lord, there’s a Four Seasons Hotel there now! Just imagine that sacrilege, Colter. Last year, the murder rate was one — and that was a murder/suicide, some computer geek and his roommate. My daddy’d roll over in his grave.”
“You lose him recently?”
“Oh, years ago. Daddy, he didn’t benefit from the new and improved statistics. He was shot and killed. Right in front of our apartment.”
“That why you went into policing?”
“One hundred percent. High school, college in three years and into the academy at twenty-one, the minimum age. Then signed on with EPA police. I worked street while I got my master’s in criminal justice at night. Then moved to CID. Criminal investigation. Loved the job. But...” A wan smile.
“What happened?”
“Didn’t work out.” She added, “I didn’t blend. So I asked for a transfer to the Task Force.”
Shaw was confused. The population he was looking at was mostly black.
She noted his expression. “Oh, not that way. I’m talking ’bout my father. I didn’t explain. Yes, I went into policing because of him. But not because he was some poor innocent got gunned down in front of Momma and me. He was an OG.”
Shaw could imagine how her fellow cops would respond to working with the daughter of an original gangster whose crew might’ve shot at or even killed their friends.
“He was a captain in the Pulgas Avenue 13s. Warrant team from Santa Clara Narcotics came after him and it went south. After I was in, I snuck his file. My oh my, Daddy was a bad one. Drugs and guns, guns and drugs. Suspect in three hits. They couldn’t make two of the cases. The one where they had a good chance, the witness disappeared. Probably in the Bay off Ravenswood.”
A click of her tongue. “Wouldn’t you know it, my brothers and I would come home from school and, damn, if Momma was sick he’d have dinner ready and be reading us Harry Potter. He’d take us to the A’s games. Half my girlfriends didn’t have a father. Daddy was there. Until, yeah, he wasn’t.”
They continued in silence for five minutes, driving over dusty surface streets, wads of trash and soda and beer cans on the sidewalks and curbside. “It’s over there.” She nodded at a three-story building that seemed to be about fifty, sixty years old. This structure, along with several others nearby, wasn’t as shabby as the approach suggested they’d be. Destiny Entertainment’s headquarters was freshly painted, bright white. Shaw could see some smart storefront offices: graphic design and advertising agencies, a catering company, consulting.
Tombstone as reimagined by Silicon Valley developers.
They parked in the company’s lot. The other cars here were modest. Not the Teslas, Maseratis and Beemers of the nearby Google and Apple dimension. The lobby was small and decorated with what seemed to be artists’ renditions of the Whispering Man, ranging from stick drawings to professional-quality oils and acrylics. They’d have been done, he supposed, by subscribers. Shaw looked for the stenciled image that the kidnapper was fond of but didn’t see it. Standish seemed to be doing the same.
The receptionist told them Marty Avon would be free in a few minutes. A display caught Shaw’s eye and they walked to a waist-high table, six by six feet, that held a model of a suburban village. A sign overhead read WELCOME TO SILICONVILLE.
A placard explained that the model was a mock-up of a proposed residential development that would be built on property in unincorporated Santa Clara and San Jose counties. Marty Avon had conceived of the idea in reaction to the “excruciatingly expensive” cost of finding a home in the area.
Shaw thought of Frank and Sophie Mulliner’s exodus to Gilroy, the Garlic Capital of the World. And the Walmart hoboes whom Henry Thompson was writing about in his blog.
Eyes on the sign, Standish said, “Have a couple open cases in the Task Force. Some of the big tech companies, they run their own employee buses from San Francisco or towns way south or east. They’ve been attacked on the road. People’re pissed, thinking it’s those companies that’re responsible for everything being so expensive. There’ve been injuries. I told them, ‘Take the damn name off the side of the bus.’ Which they did. Finally.” Standish added with a wry smile, “Wasn’t rocket science.”
Avon had created a consortium of local corporations, Shaw read, who would offer the reasonably priced housing to employees.
A generous gesture. Clever too: Shaw suspected that the investors were worried about a brain drain — coders moving to the Silicon Cornfields of Kansas or Silicon Forests in Colorado.
He wondered if because Destiny Entertainment wasn’t in the same stratosphere as Knight Time and the other big gaming studios, Avon had chosen to expand into a new field — one with a guaranteed stream of revenue: real estate.
The receptionist then said that Avon would see them. They showed IDs and were given badges and directed to the top floor. Once off the elevator they noted a sign: THE BIG KAHUNA THATAWAY →.
“Hmm.” From Standish.
As they proceeded thataway, they passed thirty workstations. The equipment was old, nothing approaching the slick gadgets at Knight Time Gaming’s booth; Shaw could only imagine what that company’s headquarters was like.
Standish knocked on the door on which a modest sign read B. KAHUNA.
“Come on in!”
40
Gangly Marty Avon rose from his chair and strode across the room. He was tall, probably six foot five. Thin, though a healthy thin that probably came from a racehorse metabolism. Avon strode forward, hands dangling, feet flopping. His mass of curly blond hair — very ’60s — jiggled. Shaw had expected the creator of The Whispering Man to be dressed gothic, in black and funereal purple. Nope. A too-large beige linen shirt, untucked, and, of all things, bell-bottoms in a rich shade of rust. His feet were in sandals because what else could they be in?
Shaw looked around the office, as did Standish. Their eyes met and he raised a brow. While the reception area may have featured pictures of the crazy psychopath, the Whispering Man, here the décor was kids’ toy store: Lionel trains, plastic soldiers, dolls, building blocks, stuffed animals, cowboy guns, board games. Everything was from before the computer era. Most of the toys didn’t even seem to need batteries.
Standish and Shaw shook his hand, and he directed them to sit on a couch in front of a coffee table on which sat a trio of plastic dinosaurs.
“You like my collection?” His high voice was dusted with a rolling Midwestern accent.
“Very nice,” Standish said noncommittally.
Shaw was silent.
“Did you both have a favorite toy growing up? I always ask my visitors that.”
“No,” they both answered simultaneously.
“You know why I love my collection? It reminds me of my philosophy of business.” He looked fondly at the shelves. “There’s one reason and one reason only that video games fail. Do you want to know why that is?”