The Breakers Page 17

  John, with typical stoicism, offered to make the arrangements for Ma’s cremation, and said we’d plan a service and scattering of the ashes for a time in the fall when most people could attend. Clearing out the home and selling it could wait awhile. “Do you want me to tell my boys?” he asked.

  His two sons from a long-ago marriage, now living back east in Boston and Raleigh, North Carolina. I was glad he offered; I hardly knew my nephews, and I wondered if John really did either.

  “If you would,” I said.

  “I take it Mick knows.”

  “Rae called him immediately after we talked, and I’ve been in touch with him all evening.”

  Patsy, of course, was ever practical, and began talking of a menu for the memorial service. Food has always been her response to crises, but I knew she’d be weeping in her fiancé Ben’s arms minutes after we ended the call.

  I didn’t know or care what time it was in London, and woke Charlene out of a sound sleep. Predictably, she went to pieces. Vic assured me he would get her calmed down.

  Elwood and Saskia were calm and resigned; both were private people and kept their sorrows to themselves. Robin, whom I’d always regarded as overly emotional, surprised me by doing the same.

  It had been a long, difficult evening after a trying day. Little wonder I was still exhausted. But I couldn’t just mope around the house; I’d be climbing the walls before noon if I did that. Chelle was still missing, Zack Kaplan’s murderer still unidentified. Those issues were what I had to focus on today, and every day until they were resolved.

  11:15 a.m.

  Tyler Pincus wasn’t at the Breakers. Or at Danny’s Inferno. I talked to a couple of the neighbors, but they hadn’t seen him that day and had no idea where he might be. Both said they’d be happy if they never saw him again.

  12:40 p.m.

  Monday-afternoon quiet at the agency. Most operatives out doing—I hoped—their jobs. I spoke briefly with Ted and Patrick, who both offered their condolences about Ma. Will wasn’t there; I called him from my office to ask if he’d turned up any new information—he hadn’t. I tried Nadia Johanssen’s number again, and again got her answering machine. Then I compulsively went over Will’s reports and my notes on Chelle’s disappearance and the Carver killings. There had to be something there that would lead me to the answers, but I couldn’t pinpoint it if there was. I went over everything again, with the same lack of results.

  Frustration made me get up and pace around like a cat in a cage. After a time I stopped that and sat down in the armchair beneath Mr. T. The cleaning staff must’ve been in last night; his leaves had been dusted. The chair had once been a horrible, butt-sprung fixture in my office—in actuality, a closet under the stairs—at All Souls. I’d dragged it along with me to Pier 24½, and Ted had spirited it away while I was on vacation and had it reupholstered in a wonderful soft leather. Now I snuggled into it, drew a hand-woven alpaca throw around me, and sat looking out at the Bay and the hills and flatlands without really seeing them.

  But the frustration didn’t let me stay there for long. Dammit, sitting and brooding wasn’t getting me anywhere. I needed to do something, even if it proved to be another waste of time.

  I got up off my ass, left M&R, and drove once more to the Outerlands.

  5:03 p.m.

  Fog was rolling in off the Pacific, enveloping Ocean Beach and Jardin Street. No lights were visible inside the Breakers, but I stopped my car and got out anyway. And when I did, I heard a weird wailing in the adjacent alley, accompanied by the slapping of feet.

  “Ooohla-ooohla-ump-tha!”

  “Rah-rashanti!”

  “Ump-tha!”

  The voices were different, and at first I thought there were several people chanting, but only one emerged onto the sidewalk. Tall, clad all in white except for a red sash that billowed in the offshore breeze—I’d finally found Tyler Pincus. Apparently, among his other accomplishments, he could speak in tongues.

  “Ump-tha! Walla-walla-walla!”

  I didn’t know exactly what whirling dervishes did, but it seemed an adequate term to describe Pincus’s antics. Apparently he’d left the building through the cellar entrance and was on his way someplace to perform magic or wizardry or whatever he did for fun and little profit.

  “Ump-tha?” he said when he saw me.

  “Walla-walla-walla,” I replied.

  He looked shocked. “Who’re you?”

  “A friend and fellow believer.”

  “So you know of these evil things.”

  “I do. Are you performing an exorcism?”

  “No exorcism. Mourning.”

  “Mourning whom?”

  “The dead one.”

  “Zack Kaplan?”

  “Cut off in the prime of his youth by the evil one.”

  “Who is the evil one?”

  “The dog of many faces and the dead eyes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He’s the one. I know. I know.”

  “How do you know? Did you see him kill Zack Kaplan?”

  “Ump-tha! Ump-tha!”

  Oh, Christ, I thought, I can’t deal with this kind of mumbo jumbo. What he needs is a straitjacket. But maybe if I can calm him down, I can get some rational answers out of him. Or the police can.

  I caught his arm to keep him from dancing any more. “You looked tired, Mr. Pincus—”

  “Pincus the magician. Pincus the grand wizard.”

  “Why don’t you sit in my car and relax for a while?”

  “Your car?” He peered around. “Oh, red!” And made a beeline for it.

  I stayed where I was and called the SFPD. This time I reached Jamie Strogan. “I’m with Tyler Pincus,” I said. “You know who he is.”

  “The loony magician who’s been making a spectacle of himself.”

  “Loony, yes, but he’s been talking as if he knows something about the Kaplan homicide.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Breakers. He’s sitting in my car, and I can try to bring him to the Hall of Justice, but he’s manic as hell and liable to make a break before I get there.”

  “Don’t even try. I’m about to go off duty and I’ll come out there on my way home. Can you hold him there for twenty minutes?”

  “I will if I have to tie him up.”

  “All right. I’m on my way.”

  I peered into my car. Pincus was fiddling with the sound system. Just as I started over to it, my phone buzzed. Nadia Johanssen, returning my call to her Virginia home.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, Ms. McCone,” she said, “but I was out of town over the weekend.”

  “Not a problem. You are the Nadia Johanssen who corresponded with Dana Krist?”

  “Yes, I am. We’d been friends since our freshman year at Bennington. But she and her husband were killed in an accident more than seven years ago. In fact, I was about to fly out to California to see her when I got the news of the accident.”

  “Any special reason for making the trip?”

  “Well, we hadn’t seen each other for a long time and, frankly, I was worried about her. I’d gotten a few odd, rambling letters, and she and Hal had been having problems at an old winery they were trying to restore.”

  Keeping an eye on Pincus, I said, “That’s why I contacted you, Ms. Johanssen. About those problems she and her husband were having. Let me read you a partially finished letter I found at the winery.” I did, and then I asked, “What can you tell me about the man who worried her because he was acting weird?”

  “Let me think a moment…Oh, yes, it was one of the workmen, a carpenter or something.”

  “Did she give his name?”

  “I don’t remember it if she did, and I no longer have her letters.”

  “In what way was the man acting weird?”

  “Being aggressive, making trouble with the other workmen. I think Hal fired him, or was going to. He was a former Special Forces guy, Hal, and he wouldn�
�t put up with that kind of behavior.”

  “Do you remember anything else Dana might have told you about the trouble?”

  She thought about it. “I’m sorry, no. Seven years is such a long time.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I thanked her and ended the conversation. As I put my phone away, Pincus yelled from the car, “No Canned Heat.”

  “Try Country Joe and the Fish.” I was pretty sure the band was on one of the oldies discs I had stored there.

  In half a minute the strains of “The Masked Marauder” filtered out to me.

  Appropriate.

  5:57 p.m.

  “Pincus is still in my car,” I told Jamie Strogan when he arrived in his unmarked police vehicle. “I found him a brand-new toy—my car’s sound system.”

  “Listening to Mozart, no doubt. What’s his story?”

  I explained as best I could, although that took some doing to someone who hadn’t yet met Pincus.

  Jamie asked, “You really think he witnessed a murder?”

  “Well, something put the idea in his head.”

  “I’ll see what I can get out of him.”

  I let Jamie sit beside Pincus, turn off Country Joe and the Fish, and identify himself. I left the passenger door open so I could listen to their conversation.

  “Mr. Pincus, I understand you witnessed a murder. When was this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Jamie raised an eyebrow at me. I nodded. We were both thinking that Zack had been killed several days ago.

  “And who was the victim?”

  “The dead one.”

  “Your neighbor, Zack Kaplan?”

  “Cut off in his prime by the dog with many faces and the dead eyes.”

  Here we go again.

  “Who’s this dog of many faces? What’s his name?”

  “I have seen him many times. Now and then.”

  “What’s his name, Mr. Pincus?”

  “The evil one.”

  “His name, what’s his name?”

  At first Pincus hadn’t seemed to mind being interrogated by a police officer, but now he began to show signs of agitation. He flipped through the folder where I keep my CDs. “No Canned Heat,” he mumbled. “No Canned Heat! No Grateful Dead!” He waved the folder, scattering CDs all over the interior. Then he shoved the door all the way open, nearly knocking me over as he lunged out, and was off and running.

  Neither Jamie nor I bothered to give chase. He sighed and said, “Crazy as hell, all right. I doubt he knows anything, but I’ll put out a BOLO on him.”

  “Probably a good idea, for his own safety. But my guess is that he’ll turn up here again; the Breakers is his home, and I doubt he has many friends.”

  After Jamie left, I got into the Mercedes. But I didn’t go anywhere yet. It was cold in the car, the offshore winds buffeting it. I turned the key in the ignition and flipped the switch for what Mick calls the “tush toaster.” After a few moments, warmth spread through me.

  I kept thinking about the conversation with Nadia Johanssen. So the Krists’ trouble had been with an aggressive member of their construction crew. Maybe a carpenter, maybe just a general laborer—

  Construction. Construction worker.

  Damon Delahanty, Chelle’s old boyfriend, was one. Al Majewski had had construction jobs before and after his military service. So had Ollie Morse…

  Ollie.

  Ollie had pale-blue eyes that very often registered nothing at all.

  Ollie, who was unstable enough to require supervision and who showed signs of aggressive behavior.

  Mentally I replayed what he and I had talked about yesterday afternoon at Danny’s Inferno, and before that, here at the Breakers. The grenade attack in Afghanistan. His struggles with PTSD. His bitterness at Al’s refusal to let him work full-time, even though Ollie had invested money in the shop on Innes Avenue, because Al thought his friend was unreliable.

  Had Ollie lived and worked on the Central Coast before joining the army? If he had, then it was entirely possible he was the Carver.

  7:10 p.m.

  Ollie wasn’t at his apartment on Forty-Seventh Avenue. He wasn’t at the Inferno either. The Redfins hadn’t seen him since the day before.

  Now what?

  Well, I could drive to the Innes Avenue shop and see if Ollie and Al were there working late. It was a small chance, but I had nowhere else to look tonight. And despite being tired and hungry, I was reluctant to give up the hunt just yet.

  All right, I’d swing by the shop. If Ollie wasn’t there, then I’d go on home and start looking for him again tomorrow.

  8:00 p.m.

  Dusk was gathering, and fog shrouded the shapes of the distant cranes and gantries of the Hunter’s Point shipyard. Broken-down railcars stood on a siding, and beyond them the waters of India Basin stretched flat and placid. I pulled my car under the portico of an old forties-style gas station near the intersection of Innes and Third Street. The building was splashed with graffiti and the pumps were long gone; ivy covered the roof.

  Hunter’s Point and its environs have been in a state of flux for years. Thousands of mostly affordable homes were planned for the area, but its development has been stymied over and over by reports showing toxic soil and groundwater. A 2018 report revealed that much of the data in a US Navy study had been either falsified or misinterpreted as to conditions that can contribute to high rates of asthma and heart attacks, cancer clusters, and toxic hotspots. It’s considered one of the most dangerous areas in the city—for both health and criminal reasons. Gunshots ring out nightly; windows are barred against breakage or theft; taggers roam the streets with their spray paint cans, and most of the buildings, inhabited or not, show evidence of their “artwork.” Muggings, understandably, are low on the list of crimes; people at the Point don’t have much to steal.

  Across the potholed pavement from where I’d parked stood Albion Castle. A forbidding six-story stone edifice, the former home of Albion Porter & Ale Brewery, it was built in the 1870s as both a home and a brewery, owing to its underground springs and large cisterns full of pure, fresh water. A long succession of owners have lived there, but tonight its windows were dark and shuttered.

  I checked the load in my .38, then stuck it in my belt. Took out my small but powerful flashlight and tucked it into my rear pocket. When I got out, I set the car alarm to maximum.

  Innes was not a long street, ending at India Basin. Mostly deserted at this time of night. I moved warily along the dark, short block of businesses, most of which were behind chain-link fences: Zimmer Boatyard; Halvorsen Brothers Marine; X-pert Cargo & Hauling; Long-Term Storage; AM Construction…

  AM Construction was small, compared to the businesses to either side. Built of various kinds of scrap lumber—plywood, cheap paneling, particleboard, and two types of aluminum siding—it seemed impermanent. A door opened onto the street, but there were no windows, and when I approached the door I saw a system of padlocks that would have confounded the most skillful of thieves. Now, what could a construction shack hold that would warrant such security?

  Sounds startled me: men’s voices coming along the street, arguing. I ducked down a narrow alley to the right.

  “You says so? You got proof?”

  “Don’ need no proof.”

  “That’s ’cause there ain’t any.”

  “I tell you, it be so.”

  “Can’t be.”

  “Can so!”

  “If I give you a buck for every time you tell me…”

  They passed, and their voices faded as they went into a nearby house.

  I continued along the side of AM Construction. Trash and broken glass littered the pebbled ground. Tar paper covered the walls here and there, but when I touched it I felt solid wood behind. At the rear, maybe four feet away, another building stood, its lower windows lighted. I slipped close to one and peered through.

  A dozen sewing machines, plied by young Asian women in shabby clothing. The machines c
lacked and hummed as the women deftly fed them brightly colored cloth; at a side table, two others removed more cloth from bolts and cut it into pieces. When one of the sewing workers finished a piece, a third woman delivered the new cloth and collected the finished product. Beside a door at the front of the small, cramped room stood a large man who reminded me of a prison guard. No way out of this sweatshop.

  I ducked down below the sweatshop’s windows and moved along the back wall of AM Construction, looking for a rear door. There was none, but around the other side I found a small, high window covered in pieces of plywood that were nailed to its frame. In my bag I had just the remedy for this situation: a multiuse tool with an attachment for prying out nails. I looked around, spotted a discarded packing box a few feet away, and dragged it over to the window. I mounted it and attacked the plywood; it splintered and cracked as I pulled. I had no fear of anyone investigating what was going on; such sounds were probably a nightly occurrence in this neighborhood.

  Finally the last board over the window gave way. I peered through the opening. There was no glass in the window frame, and the interior was totally dark. I took out my small flash and shone it around.

  The space appeared to be a typical workshop: table with two high-intensity lamps and a vise mounted on either end; pegboard behind it with neat rows of hand tools; power tools in a separate cabinet, each housed within its own compartment. Two sawhorses with a board across them held open paint cans, probably drying so they could be taken to the dump. Various workbenches were folded up and leaned against what looked like a makeshift wall to the right.

  At the far end was a closed door to another room or storage closet. The place smelled of sawdust, dampness, and chemical compounds, and the floor was slick with oil.

  I moved the light to the center and swept it up and down; three thick support beams lined up there. There was something under the middle one—