There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (2 page)

The young women nodded in unison. They were in their mid-to-late teens and dressed in jeans and sweaters—typical girls.

“Next to Amanda,” Carolyn said, “is Duc Vang.”

A young man in his early twenties with an odd brushy haircut regarded me solemnly.

“Hello, Duke,” I said, thinking incongruously of John Wayne.

Duc must have heard the shade of difference in the way I pronounced the name, because he said, “It’s D-u-c. Many people think I have taken an American name until they see it spelled out.”

Carolyn pointed at the other end of the couch, where a chubby boy of ten or eleven perched on the arm. “Next is Billy Vang.”

Billy screwed up his face and grinned hideously. Behind me, his mother made a hissing sound.

“Billy’s the family comedian,” Carolyn said. “Now we come to those on the floor. This baby is Renee, and next to her is Jenny.”

Jenny was about Billy’s age and just as plump. She exhibited better manners by smiling prettily.

Carolyn turned to me. “So there you have the entire family. Everyone has stayed home today because this is a vital conference.”

“I see.”

“In the Vietnamese culture, the family is important. Everyone has a say in decisions and everyone supports the others in time of trouble. Naturally it is necessary they all be here—except for Mr. Vang, who must keep the restaurant open.”

Duc stood abruptly. “I will get Miss McCone a chair.” He left the room and returned quickly with a straight-backed chair and placed it next to me. “Please,” he said, indicating it.

I sat, and Carolyn squeezed onto the couch next to Dolly. She said, “We discussed how to go about this, and decided Mrs. Vang will outline the problem. The others will help when appropriate. Everyone speaks good English, but I’m here to interpret in case there’s some difficulty with shades of meaning.”

I nodded. Carolyn, I thought, had already done her fair share of interpreting, explaining the family in the context of its culture while appearing to be making only polite introductions.

Mrs. Vang had remained standing by the door; now she dropped gracefully to the floor, folding her legs to one side. The baby, Renee, gave a gurgle and began crawling toward her. Lan Vang held out her hands and drew the child to her as she began to speak in careful, accented English.

“There is bad trouble in this hotel, and my family has been . . .” She paused, looked at Carolyn, then plunged ahead on her own. “We have been elected by the others here to have something done.”

After she was silent for a moment, I also looked to Carolyn for guidance. She spoke quickly in Vietnamese, and Lan Vang went on.

“The trouble is that someone seeks to frighten us. There are noises in the basement, where the furnace is. Strange noises. And shadows in the stairwell. And the lights go out.”

“Power failures,” Carolyn said.

“Yes, power failures. People are caught in the elevator and cannot get out.”

I remembered Sallie Hyde’s remark that the elevator hadn’t gotten stuck between floors in days. “When did these things start?”

Lan Vang glanced at her son Duc. He said, “About a month ago. At first it was noises. We thought perhaps it was something wrong with the furnace. Then the power began to fail. PG and E finally came to investigate and said someone was turning it off at the main switch.”

“Can you describe the noises in the basement?”

“Groaning. Howling. It was as if a wild animal was imprisoned there.”

“Did anyone go down and look?”

“The manager. Myself and my friends from floor six, the Dinh brothers. We saw nothing.”

“All right,” I said, taking out a pad and pencil and beginning to make notes, “what about these ‘shadows in the stairwell’? What are they like?”

Lan Vang said, “Large strange shadows. Oddly shaped. They wait for the children and frighten them.”

“Can you describe them a little more?”

She glanced at Billy, the chubby little boy on the arm of the couch, and spoke in Vietnamese. Billy sat up straighter and seemed to swell with importance. “I saw them. Twice. Jenny saw them too.”

The little girl nodded solemnly.

“Was there one shadow? Or more than one?” I asked.

“Only one each time.”

“What did it look like?”

“Big.” He spread his arms wide above his head.

“Big, like people are big?”

“No.”

“Like an animal?

“No . . .” He looked crestfallen, then brightened. “Maybe like an elephant.”

Oh, terrific. I thought. An escapee from the zoo is stalking the Tenderloin. “Billy, where did you see the shadow?”

He gave me an exasperated look. “Mama said, in the stairwell.”

“
Where
in the stairwell?”

Billy frowned.

From the floor, Jenny said, “On the wall.”

I looked down at her. “Did it move?”

“Yes. At first it was standing still. Then it danced around and went up, around the turn to the next floor.”

“Did you follow it?”

“No!”

“What did you do?”

“Screamed and got Mama. She came and looked, but by then it was gone.”

“Thank you, Jenny.”

Obviously proud at having stolen her brother’s place in the limelight, Jenny turned to Billy and stuck out her tongue. This one was not as angelic as she had first seemed.

I looked back at Lan Vang. “Mrs. Vang, what about those times the elevator got stuck? Was that during the power failures?”

“Yes, then. But also other times. For no reason, it stopped between floors. Once Mrs. Dinh, who is pregnant, was inside. We feared for the unborn child.”

“Did anyone come out to inspect the elevator?”

“No. The manager asked the owner to send someone, and he said he would. But no one came.

I said to Carolyn, “What about this owner?”

“That’s another story. I’ll fill you in later.”

I paused. “Did anyone contact the police about all these things?”

Mrs. Vang said, “There is a foot officer—”

“Beat officer,” Carolyn corrected her.

“Yes, beat officer. A Patrolman Sanders. I spoke with him and he came into the hotel and looked around. But he also saw nothing. He said he could do no more unless someone was hurt or if there was proof of what I told him about. He was very nice, but he could not help.”

I looked down at the scribbling in my notebook, wondering how seriously the officer had taken Mrs. Vang’s complaint and if he’d filed a report on it. “Well,” I said, “what I’d like to do now is get a list of the disturbing events, by date.”

Lan Vang set the baby in Jenny’s lap and rose. She went to a little table next to the couch and took a paper from its drawer. Handing it to me, she said, “We have written it all down.”

I unfolded the paper and saw a chart, printed in a neat hand. It contained two columns, respectively labeled Date and Incident. The first entry was for November 17, and it read, “Jenny Vang frightened by howling in furnace room. Mrs. Zemanek goes down, says no one there.”

“Who’s Mrs. Zemanek?” I asked.

“The manager,” Carolyn said. “We’ll see her later.”

“Okay.” I glanced over the list again, pleased at its detail. If only all my clients were so well prepared. “I think what I should do is study this list, check around, and then get together with all of you again when I have further questions. Would this evening be convenient?”

Lan Vang said, “It will have to be very late. We must be at the restaurant until after eleven.”

I thought of my evening’s plans. My boyfriend, Don Del Boccio, was coming to my house for dinner, but then he had a taping scheduled at the radio station where he was a disc jockey. I would be left to my own devices from about nine o’clock on. “That’s all right,” I said. “I’m used to late hours too.”

“Thank you, Miss McCone.” Lan smiled for the first time, a shy and somewhat tremulous smile that made me determined to help her and the other residents if I could.

CHAPTER TWO

Carolyn and I said goodbye to the Vangs and walked silently toward the elevator. When their door had closed and we were out of earshot, I said, “How serious do you think this problem is?”

“Serious enough that I’m willing to spend the Center’s money to have you investigate it. These are not fanciful people; they’ve experienced real danger in their lives, and they don’t imagine things. I think someone’s trying to frighten them for some reason, and I want to put a stop to it.”

I nodded and looked up and down the hall, trying to get a sense of how the hotel was laid out. At the end where the Vangs’ apartment was, the Exit sign glowed over a door that presumably opened into the stairwell where the frightening shadows lurked. At the other end, ahead of us, a window opened onto an airshaft; through it I could see the grimy stone wall of the building next door. Four doors opened off the hallway on the side that fronted on Eddy Street, but only two on the wall opposite. The front apartments were probably one-bedrooms or studios, while those in the rear—one of which was the Vangs’—would be two-bedrooms. The elevator was in the center of the building, midway between the two rear apartments.

Carolyn punched the elevator button and said, “I think you should meet the manager, Mrs. Zemanek, and then look the building over.”

“Okay. But before we see her, tell me something about Mrs. Zemanek.”

“There’s really not much to tell.” The elevator arrived, its door opening about three inches and stopping there. Carolyn sighed and flung it all the way open, then wrestled with the iron grille. “No wonder it gets stuck between floors.” She waved me into the cage, then said, “Anyway, about Mary Zemanek. She’s a lady of around seventy who supplements her Social Security with this job. I don’t think it pays much, but it does include a free apartment. Mrs. Zemanek seems to genuinely care for most of the tenants, and she doesn’t exhibit hostility toward the Vietnamese—which is something we’re up against all the time in these Tenderloin hotels—but she tends to side with the owner if there’s any sort of dispute.”

The elevator bumped to a stop at the ground floor. “Have there been many?”

“A fair number. Like I said, Mrs. Zemanek needs the job to supplement her Social Security payments, and she’s not about to make waves.”

Carolyn led me from the elevator to a door next to the deserted reception desk. “Mrs. Zemanek’s apartment.” She knocked and seconds later it was opened by a small woman whose short white hair was arranged in tight snail-like curls. She looked at Carolyn, and then her pale blue eyes surveyed me from head to foot.

“So you’re planning to go ahead with this foolishness,” she said in a low-pitched voice that was gravelly with age.

“If you mean that I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s been happening here, yes.” There was an edge to Carolyn’s words; I gathered she’d had trouble with the manager before.

“The owner won’t like somebody snooping around on his property.”

“The owner will like it less if something really bad happens here.”

The little woman stood her ground, blue-veined hand on the doorknob. “Is this the detective?” She jerked her tightly curled head at me.

“Yes, this is—”

“What if something happens to her?”

“Like what?”

“What if she falls on the stairs? Or get hurt prowling around in the basement? This is an old building; plenty of things can happen. The owner wouldn’t like—”

“The owner has insurance to cover things like that. Besides” — Carolyn glanced at me, faint amusement in her eyes — “Ms. McCone has been a detective for many years. She can take care of herself.”

Mary Zemanek looked doubtful. “It’s a funny job for a woman. I’d feel better if it you brought a man.”

“Well, it can’t be helped.”

“Mrs. Zemanek,” Carolyn raised her voice a little. “I would like your permission for Ms. McCone to look over the building.”

“What if I refuse?”

“That, of course, is your right. But if she’s denied access, we might have to call the police in to investigate instead. You can’t refuse to let
them
on the premises.”

A look of guile came into the old lady’s pale eyes. “The police were here before and they didn’t find anything.”

“They can always come back again. And this time they might discover something.”

The manager’s lips tightened into a thin line, and she glared at Carolyn. Then she said, “All right, let her look over the hotel if she wants. But the police didn’t find anything, and she won’t either. If you ask me, everyone’s in a stew over nothing.
I
don’t hear noises.
I
don’t see shadows.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Zemanek.” Carolyn turned to me. “Shall we start with the basement and work up to the roof?”

“That’s fine with me.”

Mary Zemanek said, “You can’t go out on the roof. Door’s always locked. The owner doesn’t like—”

“Perhaps you’ll let us have the key.” Carolyn held out her hand.

The manager looked at it, then shrugged and took a key off a ring that was hooked to the belt loop of her plain black dress. “If you get hurt, it’s not my fault.”

“Don’t worry,” Carolyn said, pocketing the key. “We’ll be careful.” She started for a fire door in the wall opposite the desk.

Mary Zemanek came out of her apartment and walked stiffly over to the desk, one hand pressed to the small of her back. She removed a couple of advertising circulars that had been left there, then contemplated the Christmas tree. “I should take that down. It’s a fire hazard. Those packages are an invitation to thieves.”

Carolyn turned, looking as if she was about to make a reference to Ebenezer Scrooge.

“I won’t, though,” Mrs. Zemanek went on. “Someone would only put another one in its place.” She paused, still studying the tree, then added wistfully, “Besides, it looks nice. And the owner probably won’t show up again until after the New Year.” Slowly she walked back to her apartment.

Carolyn and I pushed through the fire door and went down a hall, past three other apartments, to a second door. “She’s not as tough as she tries to act,” I said.

“Mary? No. She’s as frightened by these goings-on as anyone here, but she feels she has to set a brave example. Her way of doing that is to pretend nothing’s happening.” Carolyn held open the second fire door and I stepped onto a stairway landing.