A Wild and Lonely Place Read online

  “Thanks,” I said. “I probably won’t be in today.”

  “No problem. It’s so quiet here that I’m playing solitaire on the computer. By the way, I took the list of stuff you wanted to Charlotte Keim in person.”

  “I know; I’m calling from her office.”

  He lowered his voice as though he thought I was calling from a speakerphone. “Uh, how old is she?”

  “Twenty-five.” I threw an amused glance at Keim, who abruptly looked over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. “Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Uh-huh. Roving eyes so early in your relationship with Maggie?”

  “Shar, I hardly ever see Maggie, she works such long hours. I’ve got to look at somebody.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  He snorted and hung up on me.

  “One more call,” I told Keim, dialing my home phone.

  When he heard my voice Hy said, “Okay—what did you do with them?”

  “Do with what?”

  “The keys to the Citabria.”

  “Oh, God.” I could picture them resting at the bottom of my purse.

  “I thought as much. One loan of my airplane and you appropriate it. And I went to the trouble of leaving the MG at All Souls and taking a cab over here.”

  “Hy, I’m sorry. Are you in a hurry to leave?”

  “Not really. I’m feeling kind of feverish again, so I’m wrapped in an afghan on your couch with Ralph lying on my chest. In a minute I’m going to send him to the kitchen to make a hot toddy.”

  “You really should see a doctor.”

  “It’s just a bug; I’ll get over it. What time d’you think you’ll be home?”

  I explained about the new developments in the case. When I finished he said, “Sounds like you’ve got a full plate. Speaking of that, I found the lasagna you’ve been promising to make me in your freezer. If you want, I’ll make a salad and we can heat the lasagna up in the microwave when you get here.”

  “Great. There’re plenty of salad things in the fridge, and I’ll pick up some sourdough. See you whenever.”

  As I hung up Keim commented, “A man who can make a salad—all right!”

  “And a decent one, no less. Both the salad and the man, I mean.” I motioned at the printout that she’d spread on her desk. “So what have we got here?”

  “Well, I’m not coming up with anything on this Dawud Hamid or any of the other Azadis, except for the usual society-column stuff. But I ran a year’s search to either side of the date he disappeared for the first name Klaus. What I got was Klaus Schechtmann—Speed Schechtmann, to his friends.”

  “That sounds vaguely familiar.”

  “Ought to. Up till six months before your guy disappeared Schechtmann operated a high-tech sports book out of his German restaurant on Vallejo above the Broadway Tunnel. The whole second floor of the building was given over to operators answering toll-free lines and taking bets on everything from college football to the Kentucky Derby. Speed was raking in over a billion a year, plus his restaurant was the in spot for the international set.”

  “Meaning diplomats?”

  “Diplomats, Eurotrash, any fast-living foreigners.”

  “What was the name of the place?”

  Keim grinned. “Das Glücksspiel.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “It translates to ‘game of chance.’”

  “Talk about red-flagging the place!”

  “I’ve got a hunch old Speed suffers from the typically Teutonic ailment of thinking he’s a superior creature and thus untouchable. I had a couple of uncles who thought the same way—till they got sent to the slammer for embezzlement. Speed learned the same lesson when his crowd was infiltrated by a couple of undercover inspectors from Vice; the week before the D.A. took the case to the grand jury, he closed up shop and ran.”

  “Where to?”

  “The Caribbean, initially. In November of eighty-nine he was spotted on St. Maarten, the Dutch side of one of the Leeward Islands. They’ve got legalized gambling there, but it’s tightly controlled. Nothing flashy enough for the likes of Speed. After that he dropped out of sight.”

  Except for occasional appearances at Malika Hamid’s luncheon table.

  I gathered the printout and read through it slowly. There was no mention of Dawud Hamid in connection with Klaus Schechtmann, but the sports book must have been the scam he became involved in. After I thought about it for a few minutes, it was easy to imagine the chain of events: Hamid frequents Das Glücksspiel and becomes friendly with its proprietor; Schechtmann’s rich, fast lifestyle is seductive to a young man whose domineering mother keeps him on a short leash. Schechtmann recognizes Dawud as an easily manipulated personality who lacks scruples, needs money, and has enough talent to manage the fast-growing gambling operation for him. And in addition Hamid possesses one invaluable asset that Schechtmann does not—diplomatic immunity. If Speed shows Dawud the ropes and brings him on board, he can distance himself from the operation, leaving it in the hands of a man who cannot be forced to testify about his activities or prosecuted for them. And the billions will keep pouring into Swiss and offshore bank accounts.…

  And then, I thought, it all fell apart. Before Schechtmann could fully implement his plan, he realized his operation had been infiltrated and the D.A. was about to move on him. He sold the restaurant and fled the city, abandoning both his fiery-tempered Argentinian wife, Leila, and his young protégé. A month after he left the grand jury handed down an indictment on nine felony counts, including conspiracy and running an illegal gambling business. A warrant was issued for him, and Leila started telling their mutual friends that she’d bought a Beretta and was prepared to shoot him on sight. Schechtmann’s return trips to the city to break bread with Malika Hamid, even if he was traveling under a false passport, were hard evidence that he did indeed suffer from the Teutonic illusion of invincibility.

  I asked Keim, “What about Leila Schechtmann? Is she still in the city?”

  She grinned smugly. “I knew you’d ask, so I tracked her down. She’s living on Russian Hill with a rich Brazilian, Alejandro Ronquillo—Sandy, they call him.”

  “Diplomat?”

  “No, what they used to call a remittance man. He’s supposedly in the country to work in the trust department of Banco do Brasil—my sources say his father owns a big block of their stock—but he hardly ever shows up there. Where you’ll find him during the day is Tanforan or Golden Gate Fields or various private gambling clubs around the city. At night he’s wherever it’s currently trendy to be.”

  “And Leila? What does she do?”

  “Hangs out with the wives and mistresses of other men in Ronquillo’s set. They lunch, hit the shops and the beauty salons—you know the type.” She passed a piece of scratch paper to me. “Here’s where you’ll find her.”

  The address was on Francisco Street near Leavenworth, high above the tourist hustle in the Fisherman’s Wharf area.

  “Way ahead of me, aren’t you?” I said to Keim.

  “I’m paid to be.”

  “Any chance I can hire you away from these guys?”

  She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, I doubt you can afford me now, but from what I hear about you, that’ll change. When it does, who knows?” She grinned, nose crinkling. “I’ll tell you this—I sure wouldn’t mind working at close quarters with that darling’ Mick.”

  Eleven

  The building where Leila Schechtmann lived with her Brazilian lover was a prime example of the moderne style of architecture popular in the thirties. Four stories of white concrete with plainly framed windows and a minimum of ornamentation, it had a recessed entrance flanked by pale marble slabs and sheltered by a cantilevered canopy; the lobby was floored with large black and white tiles in a checkerboard pattern.

  I’d taken a cab to All Souls and picked up the MG, then called Schechtmann and asked if I might stop by and talk with her about her husband. She sounded intr
igued and a bit amused when she replied, “I am always happy to talk about Speed. I can tell you many dreadful things.” There was a burst of female laughter in the background before Schechtmann added, “Don’t bother to ring, the lobby door will be open. The building is only two units, we have the top, so take the elevator to the third floor.”

  The elevator opened directly onto a foyer tiled in more black and white checkerboard. A uniformed maid met me there and took me up a stairway to a big blue-and-white living room overlooking a terrace that faced the Bay. I heard female voices, but they came from above. When I looked questioningly at the maid, she indicated a spiral staircase, and I climbed it to a greenhouse room on the flat roof.

  All four walls were glass, reinforced by steel crossbeams; its retractable roof was open, and flowering plants swayed on hangers in the breeze. Other plants grew in tubs along the perimeters, and in the center was a grouping of brightly cushioned wicker chairs on which five women lounged. None was over thirty; all were fashion-model thin, dressed in expensive chic. They’d discarded their costly shoes and jackets, hiked their skirts up and propped their legs on hassocks to sun. At least a half dozen open wine bottles sat on the glass-topped table, and two more chilled in ice buckets. A sixth woman with long dark hair lay on her back on the Berber rug, stripped to her lacy red bra and panties, a wineglass propped on her flat stomach. They were all drunk as skunks.

  Years before I would have been intimidated by walking into such a gathering. I’d have felt naive and poorly dressed next to these beautiful people. But in the interim I’d met too many genuinely beautiful people, who used their wealth and leisure time to finance literacy programs and organize AIDS benefits and raise funds for the arts, to be impressed by cheap people with money. A not-so-subtle scent of corruption wafted on the breeze. I breathed it as I waited for someone to notice me.

  Finally a redhead at the opposite side of the room said, “Company, Leila.”

  The woman who lay on the rug pushed up on one elbow and looked toward me, shading her eyes with the hand that held the glass. “You must be the lady detective,” she said in a lilting Spanish-accented voice. “I have always wanted to meet a lady detective. Come enjoy a glass of wine with us and tell me what terrible, terrible thing Speed has done now.”

  I recognized Leila Schechtmann’s voice from our phone conversation. Recognized a quality in it that told me that more than wine drinking had been going on here. A few lines of coke, perhaps, to counteract the alcohol and the sun’s effects. As the other women turned curiously toward me I said, “No wine, thanks. Can we talk downstairs, please?”

  “These are my friends.” Leila gestured expansively with her glass. “Anything you have to say can be said in front of them.”

  “I’m not sure you want that.” I put a warning note behind the words, just enough to instill some unease.

  Schechtmann hesitated, pouting. This visit wasn’t going to be as much fun as she’d anticipated. After a moment she shrugged and got to her feet, stretching to show off her sleek body. To her friends she said, “Enjoy. I will not be long.” To me she added, “This way,” and moved toward the staircase.

  Downstairs she led me to a blue sofa that faced the terrace and curled in one corner. I sat at the far end and let the silence lengthen. Schechtmann worked on her wine and finally said snappishly, “Well, what is it? What has Speed done now?”

  “He may be in worse trouble than the last time, but in order to confirm that, I need some background information from you. Tell me about him.”

  “How can I start? He is a pig, an absolute pig. Do you know he abandoned me? Without so much as a cent? One day everything was fine, and the next…” She shrugged.

  “You knew about his gambling operation?”

  “Of course. It was not amusing—all those phones and little men and women taking calls—but it made us a nice living. Speed worked too hard at it, though. We never went anywhere, we never traveled at all, I was quite bored and fed up. So that year, the year he abandoned me, he found a young man and was training him to take over. Now he was amusing.” She giggled.

  “The young man was Dave Hamid?”

  “Oh, yes, now there was a man. Very handsome, he had the machismo, you know.” She set her empty glass on the end table and looked around irritably. The maid materialized with a bottle, refilled the glass, and departed. “Oh, yes, Dave Hamid was something. I ought to know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ah, you’re curious. Well, a couple of times I had him, when Speed was otherwise occupied. It should have been more, but he was a strange one, he couldn’t see anybody but Chloe, not that she could be bothered with Dave.”

  “Who’s Chloe?”

  “Chloe Love, she was one of the chefs at the restaurant.” Schechtmann wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled something bad. “The staff and the customers all thought she was so wonderful, I never did understand why. Oh, she was pretty enough, if you like those Nordic blondes, but nothing special. And why was she a chef, anyway? Woman are cooks; men are chefs.”

  Chloe Love. C.L. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

  “How did your husband feel about Chloe?”

  “How else? He is a man, and like all men, a fool.”

  “And her feelings for him?”

  “Oh, I see, you think I speak the way I do of her because I’m jealous. Well, no, it wasn’t like that at all. She couldn’t be bothered with Speed, either. Like Dave, he couldn’t understand why.”

  “Why do you think she wasn’t interested?”

  “Maybe she is a dyke, who knows?”

  “What happened to Chloe after your husband sold the restaurant?”

  “Why do you want to talk about her?”

  It was the first curiosity she’d displayed about my questions or the reason for my visit, other than a mild interest in finding out if Speed had done something terrible; she’d be satisfied with a vague reply. “Just interested, that’s all.”

  “Oh, well, I guess she got another job, or maybe she didn’t, maybe she left town. I don’t give a damn.”

  “Let’s get back to when your husband left town. You said one day everything was fine, and the next it wasn’t. I gather you didn’t suspect what he was going to do.”

  “Not at all.” She curled her body deep into the sofa’s cushions and shivered. Her lacy bra and panties were scant protection against the late-afternoon chill that was gathering in this sunless room. The maid reappeared with a loosely woven wrap and draped it over her, then topped off her wineglass.

  Impeccable service, I thought, but beneath the surface of the woman’s impassive expression I sensed strong disapproval. She was a Latina who looked to be around fifty: plain, running to plumpness, wearing a wide wedding band, she was probably a good Catholic wife and mother who would give up this job in an instant if she didn’t need the money.

  Schechtmann didn’t even thank the woman. She snuggled under the wrap, sipped wine, and began her tale of woe. “That day, I remember it so well, Speed and I were living on Tel Hill near that tower. I love the tower, don’t you, so very phallic. I was out late the night before, a party with some friends, he couldn’t go, some problem at the restaurant. When I came home he was asleep. In the morning he kissed me good-bye, left at the usual time, nothing was different.

  “Well, I had a lunch date at Stars, you know Stars? Some people say it may have had its day, but I don’t know, to me it’s as good as ever. Then a manicure and pedicure, some shopping, and at five o’clock time for drinks at a friend’s place in Sausalito. I tried to call Speed on his portable phone, to tell him to join me there, but he didn’t answer. You can imagine what I thought.”

  I shook my head.

  She looked at me as if I were incredibly stupid. “I thought he was making it with some woman. You know, the phone in the jacket pocket, the jacket on the living room floor, and Speed in the bedroom.” Again she giggled. “I ought to know how that goes.”

  “So you went to Sausalito for drinks,�
�� I prompted, anxious to hurry her through this recitation of her activities.

  “And dinner. There’s a marvelous restaurant…no, there’s not, it’s gone now. We had dinner and more drinks, and when I got home to Tel Hill Fig Newton was waiting for me.”

  “…Fig Newton?”

  “His real name is Langley, but who wants to be called that? And the nickname is so clever, don’t you think?”

  I hadn’t had a drop to drink, but I felt as if I’d been imbibing along with her. “Who is he?”

  “He was manager of Das Glücksspiel. Stupid name for a restaurant, don’t you think? Speed thought he was being so clever, and look what happened. Anyway, Fig told me everything.”

  “And that was…?”

  “While I was having a perfectly nice day, Speed sold the restaurant to one of his gambler friends, sold the condo to another, emptied all our bank accounts, and caught a plane for Miami. Fig went to the restaurant as usual that morning, Speed sent him on an errand to Oakland, and by the time he got back the new owner was there taking inventory. He’d turned all the phone people out of the second floor, ripped out the lines, fired the restaurant staff, and then he fired Fig. And he told Fig about the condo, the bank accounts, and the flight to Miami.”

  “Did you try to trace your husband in Florida?”

  “Of course, but it was too late, he disappeared with every cent we had.”

  “What about Dave Hamid? Did you see him after that?”

  She laughed cynically. “Oh, no, Dave was too busy keeping a low profile.”

  “Did the police question him?”

  “I don’t know. They may have tried, but of course it would have done no good, Dave had diplomatic immunity, he couldn’t be prosecuted, didn’t even have to testify before the grand jury. That was the reason Speed brought him into the business in the first place. Not that it helped Speed. Do you know there’s still a warrant out for him?”