Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (17 page)

“I’ve been waiting for your call.” Perhaps I spoke a bit testily; at any rate, I got a defensive response.

“I been at the doctor’s. My leg’s actin’ up again, and with the diabetes I’m in there two, three times a week. Sometimes more.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I waited, but she seemed to have forgotten what she called about. “You saw my ad?”

“I can tell you what you want to know.”

“Wonderful.”

“Come on over and bring the hundred dollars.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said come on over. You deaf?”

“What was that about a hundred dollars?”

“You want to know about Miranda and Les, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The way I read your ad, you’re offering fifty for Les and another fifty for Miranda.”

I was so taken aback by the matter-of-fact way she peddled information, so much like the way Kruzick and company had played poker on Easter eve, I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I was thinking: “See your Les and raise you one Miranda.”

“I got gallstones, you know. My leg’s been actin’ up lately, and ever since that attack last winter, I ain’t been the same. Even close to it. Doctor said he never saw nothin’ like it.” I didn’t care if it kept me from catching the Trapper, I wasn’t going to ask about her attack. Instead, I said, “Of course. If you can tell me what I need to know, I’ll be glad to pay you a hundred dollars. If you’ll give me your address, I’ll come over in an hour or so.”

“Doctor says I got to get some rest. I told him, ‘Don’t you worry. You know I’ll be in bed by three o’clock.’ He said I got to have two hours rest every afternoon, but I got to be up at five to fix supper for my son. He works nights, you know, so I always got to make sure I do that. I got no choice but to be in bed by three.”

My watch said 2:25; that meant good-bye to my burger. It also meant there wasn’t time to get someone to go with me, in case I needed a witness, but she left me no choice. “Okay. What’s your name and address?”

“Nola Pritchett; the Bonaventure Arms on Eddy Street.” The address she gave me was one of the seediest in the Tenderloin; my confidence wasn’t vastly increased when she said, “Come alone.”

“May I ask why?”

“Three people in my building right now got AIDS, a couple got TB, and I don’t even know how many’s walkin’ around with hepatitis. Strangers carry germs, so I don’t like ’em comin’ in and out, know what I mean?”

It was just as well about the burger. I was fast losing my appetite. Mrs. Pritchett certainly didn’t sound dangerous, but just in case, I wrote a memo explaining where to look for me before I went out to find a taxi. I’d walked to work but I’d cut into Mrs. Pritchett’s naptime if I tried to hoof it to the Bonaventure Arms; or considering the neighborhood, I might not even get there. I mentally slapped my wrist for thinking that last thought. The Tenderloin was unwholesome, certainly, but maybe less so of late, as families of Asian refugees moved in because of the rock-bottom rents. It was not the kind of place where a Marin County native was completely comfortable, but plenty of hookers ranged about unmolested at all hours of the day and night; not to mention the unsuspecting tourists who booked rooms at the Hilton, not knowing the neighborhood wasn’t exactly Beekman Place West.

There were plenty of junkies, crazies, and small-time thugs roaming the Tenderloin’s streets and juicing it up in its sleazy bars, but its true chambers of horrors were the filthy flophouses where who knew how many had serum hepatitis, and where crime—robbery and up—was as much a way of life as pasta in North Beach. The Bonaventure Arms was one of the vilest. The stink of vomit, urine, and rot was instantly evident, followed by equal assaults on the eyes—forty or fifty years of dust and piled-up crud on walls, floors, stairs, windows, and worse yet, what fragments there were of carpets. Specimens of Tenderloin humanity seemed almost to be blinking in the half-light, as if they’d been languishing like the Prisoner of Zenda. Surely Mrs. Pritchett’s ailments could only get worse in this atmosphere.

I still stand by that opinion, but after learning that she owned the building and managed it—if you could call it that—I found my sympathy stretched to the thickness of poor-grade plastic wrap. Her own chambers, while larger, I surmised, than most in the building, surely couldn’t have been much better than the famous hole in Calcutta. “I hope you can stand the mess,” she said by way of greeting. “I haven’t felt much like tidying up lately.” By “lately” she had to have meant in the last ten years, as I saw a ten-year-old newspaper among the others piled on her floor. Every surface was crammed with litter and bottles and pill vials, all covered not with dust, but with accumulated gunk, reminding me of spices I bought for dishes I cooked once a year or so; whenever I needed saffron, say, or sage, I’d pull the bottle off my spice rack and find it sticking to my fingers. I had the feeling anything I picked up in Mrs. Pritchett’s living room wouldn’t be easy to put down again.

My hostess cleared a place for me on the tattered sofa and took a seat herself in an armchair that would have made Goodwill turn up its nose—not because it was old and sprung, but because there were stains on it in places where one would have to be an acrobat to get in position for landing a spill. Mrs. Pritchett barely fit into it; she was shaped like a fluffed-up pillow, and she was the color of one you might find in a hospital—dead white.

Her hair also was white and tightly permed, but scrupulously clean. Her apricot dress, which was meant to have a waist but didn’t, looked fine as well. One of her stockings, however, looked like a cat’s cradle, revealing random longish leg hairs and stark white patches of skin. It had been stretched to its limit, I imagined, by legs the shape and thickness of Doric columns. I thought a lot of her health problems might be traced to her weight, but in one sense the extra fat had served her well—her face was unwrinkled and rather pretty. It was also nicely made up (though a bit heavy on the blusher). She was an odd combination of fastidiousness and utter decay.

The apartment was not only a monument to hoarding, it was made doubly oppressive by heavy drapes drawn over all the windows. I was sure if you patted one gently you’d raise enough dust for a desert
khamsin
. Yet, as my eyes became adjusted to the dark, I could see vestiges of Mrs. Pritchett’s tidy side. A religious statue of a madonna and child stood on a starched doily, the colors of the statue glowing unnaturally in that room, unencumbered by the gunk of the bottles and vials. While a filthy pink bedspread had been thrown over the sofa—apparently to improve it—Mrs. Pritchett’s chair had pinned to it three old-fashioned antimacassars, only one of which was slightly stained and none of which had the grayish look of months or years without laundering.

I sat on the very edge of the sofa, hoping she wouldn’t notice and be offended. “You know both Les and Miranda, I gather.” As I said it, I had the unpleasant notion that they might live in the building—might even be there right now. I began to think I shouldn’t have come alone.

“They used to live here.”

I breathed easier. “Together?”

“Separate floors. Though she spent a lot of time in his room, if you know what I mean. But it didn’t mean no more than a hill o’ beans to him.”

“What didn’t?”

“She didn’t. Her bein’ there. Now she—she was in love with him. If a woman who spends three quarters of her time staggerin’ from drink can love anybody.”

“But he didn’t reciprocate.”

“If that means did he have any feelin’ for her, I guess not. Not too much, anyway. Had a pet name for her, though.”

“He did?”

“Miranda Warning. And she called him Les Ismore.”

“Izzmore?”

She chuckled. “I didn’t get it either at first. Meant Les is more—kind of cute, huh?”

I would have been touched at the thought of two derelicts who still had enough spark to make puns if one of them hadn’t been a multiple murderer. “It sounds like they were pretty tight.”

“Uh-uh. Not so long as one of ’em was him. He wasn’t tight with nobody.”

“A loner?”

“That ain’t the half of it. Mean bastard.”

“Mean how?”

“Oh—just sullen. He’d as soon snap at you as say hello. Sometimes wouldn’t speak at all.” She shifted in her chair, grimaced, and bent down to rub her leg. “Ow. Hope it ain’t the phlebitis comin’ back.”

“Did you ever think he might be homosexual?”

“Him?” She hooted. “Not likely. Why’d you ask?”

I’d asked because if he were the Trapper, Miranda had followed him to the Yellow Parrot, but really the question was just for form’s sake. I thought he’d picked a gay man as a victim because he’d make an easy first target—drinking, maybe drunk, and eager to trust. “I just wondered,” I said. “Because he didn’t respond to Miranda, I guess.”

She gave another little hoot. “You ever seen Miranda? I ain’t sayin’ she wouldn’t be right pretty if she’d fix herself up, but she was usually too drunk to comb her hair. That ain’t all, though. He just didn’t have it in him. Real grim—seemed kind of preoccupied, like he was some executive instead of an unemployed laborer.”

“Like he had work to do?”

“Yep. Didn’t, though. Took odd jobs, but spent most of his time in his room—or sometimes Miranda’s. But mostly his.”

“Did they move out together?”

“That’s what I don’t know. Both of ’em just disappeared. Didn’t say they were going, just left. That’s why I have to collect the rent in advance. If I didn’t, see, half the bums in the place’d stick me for it.

“This building was my Daddy’s. It ain’t much, but it’s all he left me. He left home when I was eight or nine, didn’t hear a word out of him till one day some lawyer called—forty years later it was—said my daddy’d left me a buildin’ in San Francisco. I come all the way from North Ca’lina for this.” She looked disgusted.

“We was always dirt poor, so at least it was somethin’. He owned other buildin’s, though, the old buzzard. But he got married again, left ’em to his second family.”

I was gettin’ interested in spite of myself: “He was a bigamist?”

“Damn sure was.”

“You didn’t contest the will?”

She shrugged. “Didn’t know how.”

With an effort, I got back to the matter at hand. “When did Les and Miranda leave?”

“Don’t know exactly. Could have been gone for a week or so, maybe more, by the time I realized nobody was livin’ in Les’s. So I checked Miranda’s—she was gone, too. That’s how come I don’t know if they left together. Maybe he left first and she went to try and find him. Ain’t no way to tell.”

“When was it?”

She jumped. “Ow.” This time she rubbed her arm. “Got shootin’ pains. I got to get me some rest.”

I was starting to think she wasn’t going to be able to tell me what I needed to know. If she didn’t, I certainly wasn’t going to give her the money; but I wanted all the information I could get. I repeated my question: “Can you remember when you noticed they were missing?”

Her bland face got cagey. “Why do you want to know all this stuff, anyway?”

“I think they might have information about a case I’m working on.”

“What kind of case?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say. I just need to talk to them.”

“You got the money?”

“Yes. Do you know where they are?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“A hundred dollars is a lot of money for pretty sure.”

She pouted. “I got to buy me some med’cine.”

We finally struck a deal: fifty bucks for the tips on each one’s whereabouts, and the other fifty if the tips panned out.

“I know where Les is from.” She looked as self-satisfied as a sitting hen. “He’s got family there.”

I was disappointed in spite of myself. “You think he went to Turlock?”

“Oh. You already know.”

“I know where he’s from. Why do you think he went there?”

“Just a hunch.” But she didn’t have a poker face; she knew I wasn’t going to go for it. She kind of crumpled around the eyes and then said, “I think I’m gonna have an attack. Could you get me a glass of water, please?”

I would gladly have paid fifty dollars just to avoid going into her kitchen.

“How about Miranda?”

“She’ll be with him.”

“I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Pritchett. I’ll give you thirty-five dollars if you can remember when you first noticed Miranda and Les were missing.”

“I just don’t know how I’m gon’ pay for my med’cine. The doctor said I couldn’t afford another attack; said if it happened again, might be the last time.”

“Fifty, then.”

She cheered up. “That’ll be just fine.”

“It’s coming back to you?”

“Did I say I forgot? I couldn’t of forgot. ’Cause I was just back from Mass, wearin’ my new Easter dress, and Juney Carmichael, she comes in, says, ‘Oh, Miz Pritchett, what a pretty dress,’ and then she says, “There’s a terrible stink comin’ out of Les’s room.’”

“It was Easter, then?”

“No, the Sunday after. See, I was took so bad on Easter, I couldn’t hardly hold my head up, much less get up and go to Mass.”

“What did you find when you went in?”

“Nothin’. Just some garbage—leftover pizza and a carton of milk and such. That’s what was makin’ the stink.”

“And Miranda’s room?”

“Funny thing. She didn’t take nothin’ with her. Didn’t have very much—just a old sleepin’ bag and some clothes. I give ’em to Juney.”

“Can I talk to Juney?”

“She died of an overdose last week.” Mrs. Pritchett crossed herself.

I decided to walk back for the air, which gave me time to turn the whole conversation over in my mind. But there wasn’t much of substance. The only things I’d really learned were that Les and Miranda knew each other, and that they’d probably disappeared sometime during the week after Sanchez was killed. That helped to confirm what I already knew—that Les was the Trapper. But I wasn’t at all sure that was worth fifty dollars.

When I got back to the office, I found a cold burger on my desk and a note from Kruzick: “Had to go home. Mickey had a miscarriage.”

Without even taking time to dump the burger, I dashed out to get a cab, this time to go to North Beach for my car. I never thought of calling to ask if I should come—I knew my duty as a sister. But when I got to Mickey and Alan’s I had to ring the bell several times before getting an answer. Mickey finally came to the door, looking very drawn and red around the eyes. “Oh, Rebecca.”