Toll Call Read online

  “I’m a friend of a tenant,” I said quickly. “Ms. Nettleton. In thirty-two. She’s my secretary. My name’s Tanner.” I stuck out a hand.

  He was still suspicious but he gave my hand a vibrant shake. “I am Francisco Mendosa. Is there a complaint? Miss Nettleton has not told me of a problem. I cannot repair what I do not know is broken.”

  He seemed genuinely concerned about the condition of the building and the welfare of the tenants, which made him as rare in the city as a cheap drink. “It’s nothing like that,” I said. “I’m here about Ms. Nettleton’s accident last night.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What kind of accident?”

  “She fell down the stairs.”

  “Ah. The groceries.”

  I nodded. “They were hers. I tried to clean up as best I could, but …”

  His mouth puckered with disgust. “The flour was mixed with the jam. It made a purple glue. I used a putty knife, and a cleanser, and even then …” He shrugged helplessly.

  “She hurt herself when she fell,” I continued, “and—”

  “It is not my fault the stairs are dark,” Mendosa interrupted. “The owners allow only forty watts. It is not enough. I have told them many times. Mrs. Clinton is seventy-four. She has fallen twice. One day she will be badly hurt. I will advise her to see my son. He is a lawyer. He will make them pay for their neglect.”

  “What’s your son’s name?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I used to be a lawyer myself. I thought I might know him.”

  “His name is Raoul Mendosa. His office is in the Embarcadero Two. He does mostly immigration work. Since July he is a partner in his firm.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know him personally, but I know of him. He has a fine reputation.”

  It was true; he did. Mendosa preened at my compliment. I let him enjoy the moment before I got back to business. “Peggy—Ms. Nettleton—didn’t slip on the stairs, Mr. Mendosa. Someone pushed her.”

  His mouth curled. “Who would do such a thing? Mr. Tomkins?”

  I filed away the name. “She doesn’t know. Whoever did it surprised her and she didn’t get a good look at him.”

  He sighed. “Muggers. They are everywhere. But this is the first time inside the building. I will check the doors. I will also notify the owners, as well as the other tenants. Many things can be improved. The lights. The locks. The elevator. I do my best with what I have, but I cannot be everywhere.”

  Mendosa’s voice vanished into the silent contemplation of the landlord’s universal negligence. I asked him not to speak with anyone about Peggy’s fall for a few days, until I talked with him again.

  “Why not?” he asked. “The tenants should know that security has been broken, so they can take precautions.”

  “The man who did it may have been interested only in Ms. Nettleton. He may not be a threat to anyone else.”

  Mendosa frowned. “Are you a policeman?”

  “Private detective.”

  “And you are going to find the man?”

  “If I can.”

  “And you believe I can help you in this?”

  “You can if you saw any strangers in the building yesterday. Particularly yesterday evening.”

  His eyes drifted from my face and stared at the dark wall at my back. “I saw no one,” he said after a moment.

  “Were there any delivery men or service people? Anyone out of the ordinary you let in the building?”

  He thought for another clump of seconds. At my back the furnace made unsettling noises. “No. No deliveries; no repairs. I do the repairs myself, better than the so-called experts.”

  I reached in my pocket and took out my wallet and gave Mendosa a business card. “If you think of anything at all that might help, I’d appreciate it if you would give me a call.”

  He took the card, rubbed it with his fingertips, then put it in his breast pocket. “Raoul’s card is engraved,” he observed with a blend of pleasure and amazement. “I will help you if I can.”

  “Don’t try to do anything yourself if you see someone hanging around. Just call me. And maybe get a license number if he drives away.”

  “I will if it is possible to do so.”

  I told him about Ruthie staying with Peggy for the rest of the day, and about Peggy’s bad ankle, and then I started to leave. But I turned back before he closed the door. “How many apartments are there in the building?” I asked.

  “Sixteen,” he said. “Four each floor.”

  “How many men are there between the ages of thirty and fifty?”

  He wiped his face with his hand. “Men? There are not that many men. Most are old women, because the rents are cheaper than in most Marina buildings. The rents are cheap because the owners spend so little for maintenance. They believe I can do magic with nothing to work with. They are wrong. I have told them many times, but nothing changes. The boiler will be next. It will not last another winter.”

  “The men,” I reminded.

  “Mr. Farley. Twenty-two.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old?”

  “Fifty. Maybe less.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He is a tailor. He has a shop on Chestnut.”

  “How long has he lived here?”

  “Longer than me.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Mendosa squinted.

  “What about this Tomkins you mentioned? Why did you think he might have hurt Ms. Nettleton?”

  “Of course. Mr. Tomkins. Twenty-three.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  “Age?”

  “Forty. Perhaps more.”

  “Job?”

  He shrugged. “He is in and out at all hours. He dresses like a pachuco, with the high collar, the open shirt, the chains, the boots.”

  “How long has he lived here?”

  “A year.”

  “Has he ever said anything to you about Ms. Nettleton?”

  “He has said he would like to commit an obscenity with her.” Mendosa twisted with embarrassment, failed to meet my eye.

  “When was this?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe two months ago.”

  “Did he ever mention any other women in the building?”

  “Miss Whittle.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Miss Smith.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Forty-four.”

  “Job?”

  “Some say she is a whore.”

  “Who says?”

  “Mr. Tomkins.”

  “Was he joking?”

  “He was too angry to be joking.”

  “What else did he say about her?”

  “He said that she and Miss Nettleton were two of a kind.”

  TWELVE

  I got to the office by eleven and puttered about in a semi-attentive effort to take care of the odds and ends that were dangling from various current files in an attempt to clear my schedule of everything but Peggy. As I was filling out a time sheet on a pending missing persons case, the lawyer for the Arundel Corporation called to tell me the jury had found in favor of his client after deliberating only twenty minutes, not even stringing it out long enough to collect a free lunch. After hanging up I hurried to the cabinet, extracted the file, and calculated my bill for services rendered, then put a note on Peggy’s desk for her to get that statement in the mail first thing. Which led me to wonder when Peggy would be coming back to work. Which led me to consider safety precautions.

  I’m in and out of the office all day, leaving Peggy alone much of the time she’s on duty. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, since the office is on the second floor and the street-level door is unmarked and opens inconspicuously onto an alley. Not many people show up who don’t know where they’re going, so safety hadn’t previously been a concern. But if Peggy was being stalked by someone determined to do her harm, either I h
ad to make some arrangement for her protection or convince her to stay home until the spider was caught and put away. Since I didn’t think I could accomplish the latter, and since I didn’t think she’d stand for anything as overt as a bodyguard, I tried to think of something in between. As I was toying with increasingly absurd possibilities, I heard someone walking down the hall. Which gave me an idea good enough to make me put away the Arundel file and walk down the hall myself.

  The name on the door at the far end was chiseled into a plank of solid oak, then gilded with a swipe of gold. The door itself was wrapped in a seamless leather swatch held taut by a rectangle of brass tacks with heads as shiny as tiny suns. The stereo speakers cut into the ceiling next to the canister light played a sublime motet that calmed me down and suggested my problems weren’t so bad they couldn’t be cured by whatever was on the other side of that distinguished door. The trip down the hall from my office, in other words, was professionally and aesthetically uphill.

  Arthur Constable was a tax lawyer who limited his practice to people who really needed one, people who bought stock in H&R Block rather than took their returns there. I didn’t know Constable well, partly because he was often out of town setting up limited partnerships in places like Braddock or the Bahamas, partly because our paths seldom crossed in the normal course of things, but largely because his penchant for personal display was a bit too aggressive for my taste. He was as thin as wire, about six feet tall, his footsteps so dainty that I could always identify them when they passed my door. Which was why I had followed him to his office to ask if I could share in his secretary’s peculiar skills.

  A couple of years ago, Constable had begun collecting modern art, as an investment of course, something to do with all those dollars he raked in from clients who could deduct his fee and thus didn’t care how much he charged. Soon, Constable’s art collection had overrun his condominium, and he housed the overflow in his law office.

  The result was both peculiar and disconcerting. Constable’s collection was limited to sculpture in decidedly human form, à la George Segal, and thus his office teemed with amazingly lifelike personages, constructed from plaster or plastic or putty, accomplishing everything from knitting to urination. To me the effect was of a fairly unruly mob, but Constable evidently loved it. To guard it all, Constable had fired the secretary who used to work on her tan on the roof on sunny days, and hired a young man who possessed a combination of skills unique in the annals of secretaryhood—a 250-pound former linebacker who offered Constable an equal measure of brawn and shorthand speed.

  When I pushed my way into Constable’s office, his beefy secretary was the first object I saw, dwarfing the similarly unbelievable figures at his back. The sign on the desk claimed his name was Richard Husky, and his desk was exactly across my path, so I could get at neither Constable nor the artwork without bypassing Richard’s formidable presence. The biceps that bulged below his sleeves and the chest that deformed his shirt announced that the passage would not be easy.

  I thought he recognized me but I wasn’t sure. His eyes remained friendly, at least, and as I approached the desk his huge hands stopped performing amazingly intricate feats on a digital calculator. “My name is Tanner,” I said. “I have an office down the hall.”

  He nodded. “I know.” His voice was surprisingly gentle for such a giant.

  I gestured toward the broad expanse of desk he sat behind, which was a teak slab atop four plexiglass supports that were so transparent the wood seemed to float in the air like a caliph’s carpet. “Do you have a gun in there by any chance?” I asked.

  “What?” A blood vessel appeared above his temple.

  “Do you have a gun in the desk drawer? Or somewhere nearby?”

  He hesitated, discomfited by the questions. “Yes.”

  “Do you know how to use it?”

  “Yes,” he repeated.

  “Do you mind if I ask your boss if I can lease you and your weapon for a while? It’s no big deal. You probably won’t even have to leave your desk.”

  He thought about it, then shrugged his massive shoulders. “Whatever.”

  I gestured toward the door that lay beyond the sculpture court that lay beyond the desk. “He in?”

  Richard nodded. “If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll see if he’s free. He’s been trying to reach Brazil, but the connection’s bad.”

  He stood up. I gestured to the sign on his desk, the one etched in brushed aluminum. “Is your name really Husky?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “Arthur thought it fit the scene. For what he pays me he can call me anything he wants. My real name has eleven consonants.”

  I had always assumed Richard was gay. Now I thought perhaps he was just good-natured. He left his desk and threaded his way between a kinetic figure with a plexiglass abdomen that revealed a colorful collection of entrails, and a tangled mound that was in fact two plastic people coupling, and disappeared behind the floor-to-ceiling door. I looked over the crowd he left behind, and decided they all looked much more human than I did.

  The door reopened as I was running my hand along the spear of a big brown bushman, and Richard motioned for me to enter. As I passed him I sniffed a sweet cologne, and noticed a small pistol in a holster at his belt. The more I saw of Richard, the better I liked my plan.

  Arthur Constable was dressed more for a formal dinner than a day at the office. His suit was black silk, his tie thin and silver-threaded, his cuffs French and linked with polished coins. His hair was prematurely white, to match the silver in his accessories. His eyes were blue, his skin ruddy, his mustache trim and sophisticated.

  Constable and his desk were on a platform that raised them both a foot off the floor, so that when I accepted his invitation and sat down, his professionally pleasant smile was distinctly on a plane more elevated than my own. “I’m Marsh Tanner,” I said again. “I’m a private investigator. I work down the hall.”

  Constable bowed his head. “Of course. It’s nice to see you again.”

  “This is quite an office,” I said, taking in the couch, coffee table, lamp and easy chair, drapes and chandelier. “I probably should apologize for lowering the property values in the neighborhood.”

  Constable waved away my lowliness. “To each his own, Mr. Tanner. On the whole I find the building quite satisfactory.”

  “Me too,” I replied, then wondered how to begin, since my errand suddenly seemed absurd. “I’ve got a bit of a problem at the office,” I said finally. “I thought maybe you could help me out.”

  Constable raised his brow. “How would I do that? Is it a tax question of some sort?” His tone implied that taxes were surely the least of my worries.

  I shook my head. “It’s my secretary. Some guy has been harassing her on the phone for weeks. Last night he assaulted her as well, trying to hurt her or scare her, or maybe even kill her.”

  Constable frowned, and one of his small hands made a small fist. “How terrible. Is she all right?”

  “Yes. Luckily.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. About her physical condition, at least.”

  “Where did this happen? Here? In the building?”

  I shook my head. “At her apartment.”

  “Have the police been called?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t want them. But that’s not the problem. The problem is, I’m sure she’ll insist on coming back to work tomorrow, and I’m worried about what could happen if I have to leave and she’s in the office alone.”

  Constable unwound his fist and folded his hands in front of him. “I see. And do you have an idea that I could be of service?”

  I nodded. “I thought I could notify your secretary when Peggy would be alone, and he could open the door to the hallway and I could leave the door to my office open as well, and then he could tell if anyone tried any rough stuff down the hall. And charge to the rescue. I don’t imagine anyone who likes to pick o
n women would decide to go up against him.”

  Constable was silent for a minute. “It’s not at all a foolproof system, Mr. Tanner.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But I don’t think she’ll put up with a bodyguard. A security guard at the front door might do it, except I can’t afford to hire one.”

  Constable’s face brightened. “I have an idea for an improvement. Do you care to hear it?”

  “Sure.”

  He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, which was a swirl of rococo. “I have recently had a new sound system installed in my office.” He gestured toward a black stack of components rising against four feet of wall space to his right. The speakers were the size of refrigerators, the components included two video monitors and a compact disc player. “The system broadcasts to this office, the reception area, the hallway outside, even to my private bathroom.” Constable glanced at a narrow door to his left. “The audio man who installed it is a young genius. He was recommended to me by Bill Graham himself.”

  Since I wasn’t sure what he was driving at I didn’t say anything.

  “The audio engineer’s name is Manchester. My idea is, he could install a simple transmitter near your secretary’s work station, and connect it to a simple speaker at Richard’s desk, so that he would be certain to hear all relevant sounds, not just those loud enough to travel around the corner and down the hall and through my door. The installation would be temporary, of course, removable when this nasty business is cleared up.”

  “It’s a good plan,” I admitted. “Except that Richard might hear some things I don’t want him to hear. Things my clients would want to remain confidential.”

  “It could have a switch at your secretary’s end, so the system is activated only when she’s alone or there’s a sign of trouble. And deactivated if you’re engaged in matters of a private nature.”

  When I didn’t react, Constable hurried on. “My system is state of the art, which means Mr. Manchester charged me a small fortune for it. I’m sure if I asked he’d install a simple intercom arrangement for next to nothing. If you’re interested I would be happy to get in touch with him immediately.”