McCone and Friends (6 page)

Daniel pointed at the floor.

“San Francisco?”

Nod.

“This district?”

Frown.

“Mission district? Mis-sion?”

Nod.

“Your momma, where is she?”

Daniel bit his lip.

“Your momma?”

He raised his hand and waved.

“Gone away?” I asked Boydston.

“Gone away or dead. How long, Daniel?” When the boy didn’t respond, he repeated, “How long?”

Shrug.

“Time confuses him.” Boydston said. “Daniel, your daddy—where is he?”

The boy’s eyes narrowed and he made a violent gesture toward the door.

“Gone away?”

Curt nod.

“How long?”

Shrug.

“How long, Daniel?”

After a moment he held up two fingers.

“Days?”

Headshake.

“Weeks?”

Frown.

“Months?”

Another frown.

“Years?”

Nod.

“Thanks, Daniel.” Boydston smiled at him and motioned to the door. “You can go back to work now.” He watched the boy leave, eyes troubled, then asked me, “So what d’you think?”

“Well—he’s got good linguistic abilities; somebody bothered to teach him—probably his mother. His recollections seem scrambled. He’s fairly sure when the father left, less sure about the mother. That could mean she went away or died recently and he hasn’t found a way to mesh it with the rest of his personal history. Whatever happened, he was left to fend for himself.”

“Can you do anything for him?”

“I’m sure going to try.”

My best lead on Daniel’s identity was the clothing. There had to be a reason for the labels being cut out—and I didn’t think it was because of a tic on the boy’s part. No, somebody had wanted to conceal the origins of the duds, and when I found out where they’d come from I could pursue my investigation from that angle. I left the Cash Cow, got in the Ramblin’ Wreck, and when it finally stopped coughing, drove to the six-story building on Brannan Street south of Market where my friend Janie labors in what she calls the rag trade. Right now she works for a T-shirt manufacturer—and there’ve been years when I would’ve gone naked without her gifts of overruns—but during her career she’s touched on every area of the business; if anybody could steer me toward the manufacturer of Daniel’s clothes, she was the one. I gave them to her and she told me to call later. Then I set out on the trail of a Mission district printer who had a laminating machine.

Print and copy shops were in abundant supply there. A fair number of them did laminating work, but none recognized—or would own up to recognizing—Daniel’s three-by-five card. It took me nearly all day to canvass them, except for the half-hour when I had a beer and a burrito at La Tacqueria, and by four o’clock I was totally discouraged. So I stopped at my favorite ice cream shop, called Janie and found she was in a meeting, and to ease my frustration had a double-scoop caramel swirl in a chocolate chip cookie cone.

No wonder I’m usually carrying five spare pounds!

The shop had a section of little plastic tables and chairs, and I rested my weary feet there, planning to check in at the office and then call it a day. If turning the facts of the case over and over in my mind all evening could be considered calling it a day…

Shar warned me about that right off the bat. “If you like this business and stick with it,” she’d said, “you’ll work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You’ll think you’re not working because you’ll be a party or watching TV or even in bed with your husband. And then all of a sudden you’ll realize that half your mind’s thinking about your current case and searching for solution. Frankly, it doesn’t make for much of a life.”

Actually it makes for more than one life. Sometimes I think the time I spend on stakeouts or questioning people or prowling the city belongs to another Rae, one who has no connection to the Rae who goes to parties and watches TV and—now—sleeps with her boyfriend. I’m divided, but I don’t mind it. And if Rae-the-investigator intrudes on the off-duty Rae’s time, that’s okay. Because the off-duty Rae gets to watch Rae-the-investigator make her moves—fascinated and a little envious.

Schizoid? Maybe. But I can’t help but live and breathe the business. By now that’s as natural as breathing air.

So I sat on the little plastic chair savoring my caramel swirl and chocolate chips and realized that the half of my mind that wasn’t on sweets had come up with a weird little coincidence. Licking ice cream dribbles off my fingers, I went back to the phone and called Darrin Boydston. The printer who had hocked his laminating machine was named Jason Hill, he told me, and his shop was Quik Prints, on Mission near Geneva.

I’d gone there earlier this afternoon. When I showed Jason Hill the laminated card he’d looked kind of funny but claimed he didn’t do that kind of work, and there hadn’t been any equipment in evidence to brand him a liar. Actually, he wasn’t a liar; he didn’t do that kind of work
anymore
.

Hill was closing up when I got to Quik Prints, and he looked damned unhappy to see me again. I took the laminated card from my pocket and slapped it into his hand. “The machine you made this on is living at the Cash Cow right now,” I said. “You want to tell me about it?”

Hill—one of those bony-thin guys that you want to take home and fatten up—sighed. “You from Child Welfare or what?”

“I’m working for your pawn broker, Darrin Boydston.” I showed him the ID he hadn’t bothered to look at earlier. “Who had the card make up?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“For the kid’s sake,” he switched the Open sign in the window to Closed and came out onto the sidewalk. “Mind if we walk to my bus stop while we talk?”

I shook my head and fell in next to him. The famous San Francisco fog was in, gray and dirty, making the gray and dirty Outer Mission even more depressing than usual. As we headed toward the intersection of Mission and Geneva, Hill told me about his story.

“I found the kid on the sidewalk about seven weeks ago. It was five in the morning—I’d come in early for a rush job—and he was dazed and banged up and bleeding. Looked like he’d been mugged. I took him into the shop and was going to call the cops, but he started crying—upset about the blood on his down jacket. I sponged it off, and by the time I got back from the restroom, he was sweeping the print-room floor. I really didn’t have time to deal with the cops, so I just let him sweep. He kind of made himself indispensable.”

“And then?”

“He cried when I tried to put him outside that night, so I got him some food and let him sleep in the shop. He had coffee ready the next morning and helped me take out the trash. I still thought I should call the cops, but I was worried: He couldn’t tell them who he was or where he lived; he’d end up in some detention center or a foster home and his folks might never find him. I grew up in foster homes myself; I know all about the system. He was a sweet kid and deserved better than that. You know?”

“I know.”

“Well, I couldn’t figure
what
to do with him. I couldn’t keep him at the shop much longer—the landlord’s nosy and always on the premises. And I couldn’t take him home—I live in a tiny studio with my girlfriend and three dogs. So after a week I got an idea: I’d park him someplace with a laminated card asking for a job; I knew he wouldn’t lose it or throw it away because he loved the laminated stuff and saved all of the discards.”

“Why’d you leave him at the Cash Cow?”

“Mr. Boydston has a reputation for taking care of people. He’s helped me out plenty of times.”

“How?”

“Well, when he sends out the sixty-day notices saying you should claim your stuff or it’ll be sold, as long as you go in and make a token payment, he’ll hang onto it. He sees you’re hurting he’ll give you more than the stuff’s worth. He bends over backward to make a loan.” We got to the bus stop and Hill joined the rush-hour line. “And I was right about Mr. Boydston helping the kid, too. When I took the machine in last week, there he was, sweeping the sidewalk.”

“He recognize you?”

“Didn’t see me. Before I crossed the street, Mr. Boydston sent him on some errand. The kid’s in good hands.”

Funny how every now and then when you think the whole city’s gone to hell, you discover there’re a few good people left…