Toll Call Read online

  An hour later I was still waiting and the bag was still resting on the bench. No one had approached it, not even a thief. Fifteen minutes after that I gave up hope and left the roof.

  The stairs took longer to descend than the reverse. The lights in Constable’s office were out except for those that lit the permanent occupants. I hurried out of the building and trotted to the park, to make one last try from closer in. By the time I got there, the bench was empty.

  I swore so bitterly two heads turned my way in pious disapproval. Their probity incensed me all the more. I looked this way and that, and this way once again. Miraculously, I saw the bag, squeezed into the grimy fist of what appeared to be a transient.

  On the slim chance that it was the spider in disguise, I trotted ahead of the man, then turned and walked back toward him, giving me full view. Disguise was out of the question. So was anything that required my suspect to do anything more complex than breathe and scavenge. When he disappeared into an alley, I gave up.

  Back in the office I tried to think of something sensible to do. Surprisingly, I managed to do just that. After toasting my perspicacity, I picked up the phone and called a cop.

  NINETEEN

  Charley Sleet’s the best cop in San Francisco, which means he’s respected, feared, and steered clear of, leaving him both effective and incorruptible. It also means he’s embarrassed as hell about the series of scandals that has rocked the department over the past two years—the sex parties, the sadistic drug raids, the petty harassment of department critics, the overzealous roust of a local sex queen—but he’s not so embarrassed that it affects the way he does his job.

  Charley has helped me out in several of my cases, and I’ve helped him in one or two of his. We play poker once in a while, or go to a ballgame or meet for a drink. But my idea of a nice evening is to stay at home, and ever since his wife died Charley’s is to stay anywhere but—preferably at a greasy spoon in the Tenderloin, waiting for someone to come to him for help. So we don’t see each other all that often anymore, but we enjoy it when we do.

  When he came on the line I asked Charley if he had time for a drink. He said he had an appointment in the Moscone Center, then a bust going down in the Western Addition. He suggested we meet at the House of Shields in an hour, that is, if I was buying. I said it was his turn. He reminded me that I’d bet on the Niners against the Bears and hadn’t made good my loss. I told him I could afford two rounds and after that he was on his own. He told me two rounds was all he had time for.

  I was settled into a booth at the back when Charley crossed New Montgomery in front of the Palace Hotel, entered the bar, and momentarily eclipsed the light from the setting sun. When he saw me he waved, said something gruff and scatalogical to the tuxedoed bartender, got his usual double shot of Bushmills neat, and sauntered back to where I was sitting. The booth shrieked beneath his eighth of a ton, and the table between us tilted precariously when Charley rested a forearm along its edge. The stuffed moose above our heads seemed cheered by the arrival of a kindred spirit.

  Charley toasted me silently, knocked back half his whiskey, and put the glass on the table within easy reach of his paw. “This business, or you got another wager on your mind? Like maybe you like Nebraska over Oklahoma.”

  “Business, mostly.”

  “Good. I was afraid you’d hit the skids so hard you were welshing on the twenty you owe me.”

  “What twenty? I thought I was only into you for the Bears game.”

  “Remember New Year’s? You bet me someone would murder Dan White within a year after he got out of Soledad. I’ll take it in cash or a gift certificate at the Tosca.”

  “Wait a minute. I think we’ve got a definitional problem here.”

  “You said murder. Suicide isn’t murder.”

  “I said kill, not murder.”

  “Kill, my ass. Just for that I want cash.”

  “It’ll have to be next month.”

  “I thought you had a client.”

  “I’ve got a case, not a client.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’ve got a client but I’m handling the case for free.”

  “Jesus. I keep thinking you’ll wise up and you keep staying dumb. Do I know her?”

  “Who said it’s a her?”

  “You always limit your charitable impulses to the fairer sex, Tanner. What’s the scam?”

  “This is confidential, Charley.”

  “You insult me again and it’ll cost you more than a drink to take up my time.” Charley looked at his watch. “Let’s get to it, can we? I got a hooker primed to roll over on her pimp. She’s meeting me at Laguna and Eddy at seven.”

  I took a deep breath. “It started with anonymous phone calls. Sex stuff, though not crude, particularly. With threats of harm if she didn’t answer his questions, tell him everything he wanted to know, stay on the line as long as he wanted.”

  Charley was nodding his head before I finished. “We get a bunch of that these days. And they get even more of it over in Berkeley. Who we talking about, anyway?”

  I shook my head. “It’s kind of touchy. I’m not sure where I stand on this myself anymore, so I’m not sure how much I can tell you.”

  Charley shrugged. “Up to you. She file a complaint?”

  “For what?”

  “P.C. 653(m)—a misdemeanor to annoy by phone through the use of obscenities or threats of injury.”

  I shook my head. “No complaint, Charley. She doesn’t know who it is. Or so she says.”

  “You sound like you don’t believe her.”

  “I don’t know what I believe,” I said truthfully.

  “This have anything to do with the Tomkins character you asked me to check on?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “What do you have on him?”

  “He’s a sex offender all right. On probation for P.C. 314 exposure. Only thing unusual about him is he comes from good stock. Family owns a big chunk of Cow Hollow, since back before the quake. So the little boy gets good lawyers, which means so far he’s stayed out of the joint. But the DA’s sure they’ve got him violated this time. Strong witness; multiple offense. They plan to send old Jud to Folsom on the first bus. If you’ve got him on a harassment number, the DA will be happy to hear from you. Can’t hurt you to do him a favor, either.”

  “I can’t prove anything yet, Charley. Tomkins lives in the building where the calls come in, but the woman says she doesn’t recognize the voice.”

  “Well, if she doesn’t know him that lets out a civil injunction, which is the other way they usually go. Get a court order telling the jerk to leave them alone. Problem with the injunction isn’t getting it, though, it’s enforcing it. Cops, don’t like to act on two-bit harassment calls, even though for the victim two years of two-bit harassment can add up to a million dollars’ worth of grief. You sure she doesn’t know the bastard?”

  “She says not. That’s all I know. Why?”

  “Oh, sometimes they get real embarrassed by how involved they’ve gotten with the jerk. So they hold that part back. The name, I mean.”

  “That’s possible in this case,” I admitted. “She’s certainly let herself get knotted up with the guy.”

  “Okay. So what do you want to know?”

  “First, if she did file a criminal complaint, could the investigation be done in secret?”

  “So the loon doesn’t know she went to the law, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  “We try, but we’re not real good at it. In these cases the guy usually watches his victim like a hawk, which means he’d probably get wise right away if we started checking it out. And I gotta tell you, Marsh, sometimes it jacks them up even more when they know we’re after them. They get a rush from the chase.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  Charley drained his drink and I motioned for two more. “Most of these creeps keep their distance, Marsh,” he went on. “They keep
close tabs on the women but they usually avoid personal confrontations. Worship from afar, and all that. Probably won’t come to a hill of beans.”

  I shook my head. “This one got violent, Charley.”

  “When?”

  “Two nights ago.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Shoved her down the stairs.”

  “Where?”

  “Her apartment.”

  “She all right?”

  “Twisted ankle and sore ribs.”

  “He say why he did it?”

  “Not specifically. But she went to someone for help earlier that day, so it figures he knew that and was warning her to drop it.”

  “That someone you, old buddy?”

  I shook my head.

  Charley shrugged. “I’ve pulled a couple of these psy-rape cases myself. Talked with the shrinks a few times. Some of these bastards are total empties—see things that aren’t there, obey secret commands and all that—but others seem pretty normal except for a fixation on one particular woman. Problem is, the proverbial magnificent obsession’s not all that distinguishable from criminal harassment sometimes. Legally speaking, that is.”

  The waiter brought the second round of drinks. I paid him and pocketed the change.

  “The profile says the guy has repressed sexual desires,” Charley said after the waiter left, “probably the result of your basic strict upbringing. Probably preached at by his mama that sex was evil, and men who did it were devils, the whole repressive number. So the guy’s born to be a zero with the broads, and his gonads shrivel to the size of BBs when he has to handle them one-on-one, so he moves to the phone bit. This lets him say what’s on his mind, and what’s on his mind can be pretty sick. He convinces himself that the victim really does love him in spite of what she says, and that his function in life is to make her realize it. Of course, underneath it all he despises her for her sexuality, and every time she does what he wants her to do he despises her even more, which is why you can’t ever ignore the possibility of violence. What’s he do, make weird demands on her?”

  I nodded. “Telling him all kinds of details about her sex life is what most of it amounts to.”

  Charley looked at me through lidded eyes. “Victim feels guilty about the whole business a lot of the time, Marsh. Starts feeling sorry for the guy. Decides the whole situation must have been her fault, somehow; that she must have led him on. Gets to where she feels the only way everything’ll be all right again is if she just keeps doing what he wants. Lots of times they don’t want help from the outside, or say they don’t. Lots of times they stop resisting the bastard and try like hell to help him achieve his fantasy. I know a couple of times we nailed the guy but the victim wouldn’t testify against him on the criminal charge. One time they ended up getting married, for Christ’s sake.”

  “The human animal is a wondrous thing.”

  “So I’ve observed. And it’s amazing what some of these bastards can get people to do. Case in Wisconsin, the guy convinced a bunch of women to walk down the street half naked in order to cure some weird affliction he told them they had. Apparently they really believed if they showed the town their tits they’d be cured of what ailed them.”

  “So what would you do if you were a victim?”

  Charley shrugged. “I got to tell you, Marsh, a lot of women just leave town. Figure that’s the only way it’s going to end.”

  “That’s not an option here I don’t think,” I said, wondering if I spoke the truth, wondering if Peggy would all of a sudden just disappear.

  Charley looked at his watch. “Time’s awasting, Tanner,” he chided. “How often does he call?”

  “Every night.”

  “She know anything at all about him?”

  “Just basically that he’s educated and he’s a loser with women.”

  “So is half the world, you and me included. What kind of evidence has she got?”

  I thought about it. “Only her word, I guess. Plus I overheard one of the calls.”

  “She should start taping them. Every time he calls, get it on tape.”

  “Last time I checked, that was illegal.”

  “I didn’t say she should tell the FBI she’s doing it—just that she should. Second, she should make a diary of the calls—when, what he said, like that. Then she should try to get something specific out of him, something that might ID him.”

  “He hates it when she asks him questions.”

  “Yeah, well, he’ll keep playing God till someone puts a stop to it. She have a trace put on her phone yet?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Might give it a try. The phone guys are pretty quick these days. If she keeps him on a couple of minutes they can usually track it down.”

  “I don’t know if she’d go for that.”

  “What the hell? She want the guy out of her life, or not?”

  “I don’t know,” I said without thinking, then felt traitorous doing so.

  “So she’s hot for him, huh?”

  “Not exactly. But he has some hold on her. I’m not sure what it is. She’s only prepared to go so far to catch him. It’s as though there’s some sort of rules to their game or something.”

  Charley hesitated, then gave me a mischievous grin. “Well, hell. If you’re in on it, Tarzan, then maybe she could take a chance.”

  “On what?”

  “Bait a trap. Lure the guy somewhere, offer him whatever she thinks will get him hottest, then you pounce on him like a pit bull when he shows up to collect his prize.”

  “I thought of that,” I admitted. “But lots of things could go wrong.”

  “Yeah. And next time he jumps her she could go out and stay out. Then you’d be stuck with that—what was her name?”

  “Ramona.”

  “Right. The one who filed your cases under the client’s first name.”

  “And typed my letters with the red ribbon because she thought it looked cute.”

  Charley laughed his volcanic laugh and leaned back against the booth, which provoked another anguished moan. “From what you’ve said and the way you’ve said it,” he drawled, “I got to think we’re talking about one of two people.”

  “Who?”

  “Ruthie or Peggy. Which is it?”

  I sighed and told him, but it didn’t seem to help.

  TWENTY

  Charley went off to meet his hooker and I left Shields’ and strolled over to Third Street and dined on the blue plate special at Max’s Diner. I spent most of the mealtime considering Charley’s suggestion that I devise a suitable charade that would lure the spider from his web to a place where I could nab him while at the same time insuring the survival of the bait.

  The obvious lure was Peggy, the obvious ploy the offer of a sexual favor that could only be enjoyed in person, a favor irresistible even to someone whose amatory adventures were exclusively vicarious. Over coffee and dessert I imagined Peggy in a variety of seductive deployments, but by the time I paid the check I hadn’t come up with anything more reliable than a B movie plot.

  Similar stratagems wriggled through my mind on the way back to my car, until I reminded myself that for all intents and purposes I’d been ordered off the case. At least that seemed a corollary consequence of being ordered out of Peggy’s apartment the night before, and if I honored her desire there was no need to plot erotic scenarios and I could go home and watch the week’s installment of Hill Street Blues.

  But the past both opens and closes the doors to future conduct, and I couldn’t let it drop. Peggy was my secretary and something more than my friend. She had helped me over so many bumps in my own uneven life that I had to try to return the favor whether she wanted me to or not. At least that was both my resolution and my rationale as I drove north on Sansome Street, and what made me stop off at the office instead of throwing in the towel.

  The office was uninviting as it always is when I’m the only person in it. I sat down at Peggy’s desk and spun her Rolod
ex until I found the card I wanted, which was right next to Peggy’s own. After jotting the information in my notebook, I picked up the phone and dialed Peggy’s number. My essay at harmony was delayed, however, because it wasn’t Peggy who answered the phone, it was Ruthie Spring. I asked her how it was going.

  “We’re eating,” she said, her words guarded, obviously overheard.

  “I suppose I’m still persona non grata over there.”

  “Yeah. And I ain’t all that grata either.”

  “She tell you what she did at the office today?”

  “Nope.”

  “You want to know?”

  “If it had something to do with the guy on the phone I do.”

  I told Ruthie about the bag of Peggy’s underthings, about her promise to deliver it to the spider, about its deposit in the little corporate park, and about my fruitless vigil. When I’d finished, Ruthie scoffed and swore. “Going to take more than a game of capture the flag to snare this dude,” she grumbled. “Hell, he probably just put you through some paces to see how gullible you are.”

  “You see the boyfriend Hess?” I asked, sidestepping further examination of my failed surveillance.

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “Just a minute. Let me close this door.”

  I heard muffled scraping sounds, and a brief muddle of voices, then Ruthie came back on the line. “I don’t put him at the head of the parade, Marsh, but I could be wrong. He doesn’t like the way she handled the kiss-off, that’s for sure, and he had a few gutter words to say for your friend and mine, but I don’t think he’s wild enough to be doing more than fuming. Claims he hasn’t seen her for six months. Claims to hope to never see her again. Claims that if she’s in some sort of trouble it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving gal.”

  “He threatened her, didn’t he?”

  “He admits to it. Even admits to belting her one time. Says it was just temper and booze. Says he only did it after she unloaded on him in one of their fights, made light of everything from his Mercedes to his taste in clothes, which means she probably had things to say about his performance in the hay as well. Says he’s glad he’s rid of her, says he spent over a grand on her while they were courting, taking her places and showing her things and buying her trinkets, and didn’t get anything out of it he couldn’t have gotten from a two-dollar whore.”