There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (3 page)

The walls were the same dull green as in the hallway, and the steps were gray concrete with worn metal tread. A bare bulb gleamed in a ceramic wall fixture. The door shut behind us with a sigh from its pneumatic mechanism.

“This is the stairwell where the kids saw the shadows.” Carolyn’s voice bounced hollowly off the walls that enclosed us.

“Which way first?” I asked. “Up or down?”

“Down, I think.” She reached for a switch next to the door and a light flashed on below. I started down there, clutching the cold metal railing, my footsteps echoing.

“What about the owner?” I asked. “Mrs. Zemanek’s attitude toward him seems to stop just short of reverence.”

“I think it’s more like the fear of God. His name is Roy LaFond, and he’s by no means your typical slum landlord.”

“I’ve heard the name somewhere.”

“LaFond is a big Marin County real estate developer. He did that Bay Shores condominium project in Tiburon.”

“That’s why it sounds familiar. How’d he end up owning a place like this?”

“Mrs. Zemanek says he took it as part of a larger deal about a year ago. You know—the sort of thing where the former owner wanted to unload it and gave LaFond a lower price on some property he really wanted in exchange for taking the Globe off his hands. Anyway, LaFond seems genuinely horrified to possess a Tenderloin hotel full of Vietnamese and other social misfits.”

We reached the bottom of the stairway and stopped. To our right was a bank of plywood storage lockers, most of them secured with padlocks. Straight ahead was the gray metal hulk of a furnace. And to one side of the furnace a clumsy old-fashioned boiler stood on absurd spindly legs. It reminded me of a big white cow that had grown too fat for her underpinnings.

“Quiet down here, isn’t it?” I said. “The furnace isn’t on. Is one of the disputes you mentioned about heat?” Heat was a major problem in the Tenderloin. A few years ago the morning paper had run a series of articles exposing the “heat cheats,” landlords whose skimping forced tenants—the majority of whom were elderly and needed more warmth than most people to stay healthy—to wear coats at all hours and sleep in several layers of clothing. As a result, the city inspectors had swept the hotels, demanding proof that they were being heated the legally requisite eleven hours per day. Owners had been fined, some had been jailed, and compliance had been forced. But now heat was a dead issue, having been milked by the media for all it was worth, and many hotels had become cold once again.

“No,” Carolyn said. “Roy LaFond stays strictly within the letter of the law.”

“I noticed the hotel is better maintained than most.”

“No thanks to the owner. The Vietnamese are a tidy people; they can’t abide dirt, and they don’t wait for someone else to clean up after them. This place was a pigsty when we moved the first family in over two years ago. You’d never know that now.”

I nodded and looked around the basement. It was as tidy as the upstairs halls, and there didn’t seem to be anyplace a person could hide. The storage lockers were flush against the walls. A small person might be able to squeeze behind the furnace, but that was the first place any searcher would look. And the walls were all solid cinderblock; there were no niches, vents, or other recesses. I supposed someone could have climbed up on the overhead heat ducting, but it didn’t look like it would support much more than a child’s weight.

I went over to the boiler and touched its curving side; it was warm. “Plenty of hot water.”

“Yes.”

“So what
were
the disputes over, then?”

“LaFond stays too much within the law. He’s deathly afraid of being cited or having something happen that will force his insurance rates up. He’s always issuing directives through Mary Zemanek—they’re perfectly legal but they make like here very rough.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for one thing, the children are not allowed to play in the halls or the lobby. That creates a difficult situation for tenants with active youngsters. The stairs are officially off limits to them too. And that makes things damned near impossible when the elevator’s not working.” Anger had come into Carolyn’s voice; even in the dim light I could see that her face was flushed.

“I take it the rules aren’t always observed, since Billy and Jenny saw shadows in the stairwell.”

“Of course they’re not! They’re ridiculous. And this thing about the roof being locked—there’s a lot of room up there, and high barriers so no one could possibly fall. It would be an ideal place for the children to play, plus the people could grow vegetables in containers. The tenants got together and petitioned LaFond to let them use it. His reply? A flat ‘no’ delivered through Mary Zemanek.”

“What about the Christmas tree? Would he really demand it be removed, as Mrs. Zemanek hinted?”

“He’d probably throw it in the trash himself—plus rip the decorations off the fire escape. To the Roy LaFonds of the world, the Vangs and the others here simply aren’t people with normal human needs. They’re rent-paying units. And if the laws didn’t prevent it, you can bet their rents would have tripled in the last year.”

I watched Carolyn, surprised at her vehemence. I’d seen her under some of the worst of circumstances, and she’d always been rational and controlled. Too controlled, perhaps. I was glad to glimpse this fire under her cool exterior.

In the silence, she began shaking her head ruefully. “Forgive me, but I get so angry. In my work I see too many people like the Vangs, who have been through so much. They’ve fled their homeland, lost everything, and yet they go on striving. To me, they’re heroic people; to Roy LaFond, who’s had everything handed to him all his life, they’re dirt.”

I thought about that, then said cautiously, “Do you really know that Roy LaFond had it so easy?”

She shrugged and turned away. “I know the type. And now we’d better take a look at the rest of the stairwell and the roof. I assume you’ve seen all you want to down here.”

“I will have in a minute.” I went over to the storage lockers and began opening those that weren’t secured by padlocks. The first two were empty; the third contained a cardboard roach trap and a box of miscellaneous nails and screws; the fourth was crammed with some sort of dark material. I pulled it out and spread it on the floor.

It was a sheet, an old, tattered one, in an ugly olive green. There were two neatly cut holes near its center. I picked it up and held the holes to my eyes.

“What’s that?” Carolyn said.

“Looks like your basic Halloween ghost costume.”

“In dark green? I doubt it. Besides, what’s it doing down here?”

“Maybe some former tenant forgot it. Or . . .” I looked thoughtfully at the sheet.

Carolyn waited.

“You know,” I said, “this could be what the prankster uses to make those shadows on the stairwell walls. A person could look very scary in shadow if he was wearing this and waving the material around.”

“I guess so. But if that’s the case, why didn’t Mrs. Zemanek or Duc and his friends find it when they investigated down here?”

“If you recall, they were looking for a person who was making noise in this room, not the creature in the stairwell. Besides, even if they’d seen this, to them it probably would have been just an old sheet.”

She looked dubious, but didn’t say anything.

I bundled the sheet up and stuffed it under my arm. “I’ll bring it along tonight and ask if anyone knows who it belongs to. If no one recognizes it, this could be our first concrete evidence that someone really is trying to frighten these people.” Then I motioned at the stairs. “Let’s see if we can find anything on the roof.”

We went up seven flights, and Carolyn unlocked the door to the roof. As she had said, there were high concrete parapets around the periphery, topped by a tall chain-link barrier. It might not be a good place for children to play unsupervised, but under the eye of a vigilant adult, no harm could possibly come to them. And there was ample room for a container garden.

I made a thorough search, finding nothing, then crossed to the west side and looked out over the rooftops. I was beginning to feel some of the same anger Carolyn had expressed, and as if she sensed that, she came up beside me and said, “You know, sometimes I feel so helpless. There’s so much these people—my people—need and so little I can do for them. The Center doesn’t have the staff or the money. Every year we think we won’t get re-funded, and there’s always a two-month gap when we exist on credit and do without salary waiting to hear what the government agencies and private foundations will dole out to us. And then I see someone like Roy LaFond, who could help if he wanted to ...”

“I think I understand.”

She studied my face for a moment, then nodded decisively. “Yes, I guess you do.”

I looked back out over San Francisco, seeing the squalid roofs of the Tenderloin and, beyond them, the curves of the hills and skyscrapers where the rich people lived. More and more lately it seemed to me that there was so much unnecessary waste in the world, waste of our precious resources—be they forests or endangered species of animals. Or people. And most of it stemmed from the same reason that made Roy LaFond keep this roof locked and off limits. Simple cowardice—the inability to take a personal risk or make a stand for what one knew was right—was dressed up as looking out for Number One, as watching out for that old bottom line.

Maybe, I thought, I didn’t belong in this world of the nineteen-eighties, where things counted more than people. Maybe I was too much a child of the sixties, a throwback to a time when many of us had tried to care about one another. But I couldn’t change that; I’d just have to muddle along, doing what I could in my own small way. And one thing I could do was try to make matters better for these people—here in the Globe Hotel, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, on this wintry day in the eighties.

CHAPTER THREE

Carolyn had to get back to her office, so I said, I’d check in with her later. We parted on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, and I watched her hurry off toward Market Street, her shiny hair bouncing as she made her way among the slower-moving pedestrians. A tall black man—wearing only jeans and an open leather vest in spite of the December chill—stopped to stare at her with obvious pleasure. Carolyn brushed by him, her pace not faltering. He turned, made a move to follow her, then shrugged and continued on his way.

When I was sure the man wasn’t going to change his mind and go after her, I went to my car and locked the olive-green sheet in the trunk. Then I looked up Eddy Street toward the corner. There was a grocery store, Tran’s Fine Foods, and I could see a pay phone just inside its door. I went up there, skirting three old women in black who looked as if they’d just come from Mass and a strolling blond girl in hotpants, an early rise for San Francisco’s hooking community. When I got to the phone I discovered I had no change, but the wizened Oriental man behind the grocery counter willingly broke a dollar for me. I called Marin County Information, got Roy LaFond’s office number in San Rafael, and called to make an appointment. Monday was his busy day, his secretary said, but he could make time for me at two o’clock.

Hanging up the receiver, I looked at my watch. Five past eleven. Three hours to kill, and I might as well spend most of it in the neighborhood. I turned back to the counter and watched the old man ring up the sale of a pack of cigarettes. A transistor radio on a shelf behind him was blaring rock-and-roll, and when the song ended, the announcer came on with the call letters: KSUN, the Light of the Bay. It was the station where my friend Don worked—a raucous, rowdy and thoroughly ear-splitting frequency on the dial. I wondered why the old man wanted to endanger his eardrums with it.

When the customer had left, I went up to the counter and said, “Excuse me, are you the owner?”

“Yes, ma’am. Hung Tran at your service. What may I do for you?” His accent was heavy, but his pronunciation was clear and precise.

“My name is Sharon McCone, Mr. Tran. I’m a private detective, working for some of the people who live at the Globe Apartment Hotel.”

He nodded, displaying no surprise at my occupation.

“Do you know any of the Globe’s residents?” I asked.

“Yes, I do. This is the nearest market. Many of them shop here.”

I looked around. While the store was stocked with the standard items you find in any city grocery, there were also distinctly Oriental foodstuff—big sacks of rice, tins of soy sauce,
bok choy
in the produce section. “Then perhaps,” I said, “you know of the frightening things that have been happening at the Globe?”

“Yes, a number of the people have spoken of them to me. This is what they have hired you to find out about?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you will be able to help them.” His eyes, behind gold-rimmed spectacles, were polite but emotionless.

“I hope so too, Mr. Tran; who do you think is responsible for frightening these people?”

Now he looked surprised. “I? I have no opinion.”

“But surely you must hear things. People talk. In your position you must know a great deal about what goes on in the neighborhood.”

He laced his waxy-looking hands together across the front of his gray smock. “People talk, yes. But what they say often makes no sense.”

“Still, it would help me to know what they are saying.”

His eyes strayed toward the door. The girl in hotpants stood there, arranging her fall of elaborately teased blond hair with the aid of her reflection in the plate glass. Mr. Trans lips curled, then he looked at me. “They say many things. Some think it is the owner of the building, who seeks to remove the people so he can rent the apartments at a higher rate.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I have seen this owner. He is not one to hide in basements.”

“What else?”

“They say it is the young me, the
bui doi
.”

“
Bui doi
?”

“In my language, it means ‘the dust of life.’ You would call them gangs.”

“Street gangs, juvenile delinquents?”

“That is what outsiders say. They do not understand that in our culture we do not have gangs like those of your black or Chinese or Chicano citizens. If this is the work of the
bui doi
, it is far more serious than teenagers. But I do not see what interest they would have in that hotel.”