While Other People Sleep Read online

  I moved through the knots of well-dressed people, keeping my eyes on Russ Auerbach, the club owner with whom Lee D’Silva “had something going.” I'd kept him under surveillance for two hours, since he'd put in an appearance at Napoli, his North Beach jazz club, and now he was crossing Folsom on his way to End of the Line, a similar establishment.

  After I'd left Misty Tyree's flat, I'd put in a call to my old friend Wolf, who runs a two-person agency, hoping to co-opt him to run a surveillance on the upper flat on Mariposa Street. I didn't really expect D’Silva to return there—not now that I'd visited it—but I wanted it watched all the same. Wolf, however, was about to leave town on another job.

  “Anybody you can recommend I use?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. You've met Tamara Corbin?”

  “Uh-huh.” Wolf's assistant was a bright young African American whose computer skills were a close match for Mick's. She had brought Wolf, an avowed technophobe, kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

  “Well, Ms. Corbin has decided that the P.I. business isn't as demeaning as she first thought and that it might be a career option for her. ‘A way to scam some of the big bucks’ is the way she puts it. Of course, she's looking at the high-tech end, but as I keep telling her, some low-tech fieldwork is necessary for an all-around education.”

  From his joking tone, I knew Tamara was there and listening to his end of the conversation. “Absolutely necessary,” I agreed.

  “Besides, you'd be doing me a favor. This job I've got may keep me away for a week or so, and if she's stuck here in the office all by her lonesome, she'll probably do something else to make it impossible for me to find anything around here without her help. As things stand now, it's a toss-up as to which of us is running the operation and which of us is the scut worker.”

  “Consider her hired, then.”

  Wolf put Tamara on the phone, and after she made a few kidding remarks in response to his, we discussed the details of the surveillance and settled on a fee. Then I went to Mick's office, where he was waiting for Keim, whom Rae had assigned to a new corporate undercover job.

  “What d'you know about the nightclub scene here in the city?” I asked him.

  “Everything.” He smiled self-importantly.

  I regarded him sternly. “How come you're so in tune with it?” Mick was only nineteen—two years short of the legal drinking age here in California—and while he looked and acted older, most clubs carded anyone who appeared to be under thirty.

  His grin faded. “I thought you and I had agreed to the principle of don't-ask, don't-tell when it comes to our private lives.”

  “Only because you agreed to don't-take-risks, don't-get-hurt.”

  “I'm not, and I won't.”

  Which probably meant he'd come into possession of an extremely good and complete set of fake ID. I sighed and gave up on playing the interfering aunt. Mick had been raised with somewhat loose supervision under conditions that would make most experts on parenting wince, but he'd also inherited his parents’ basic good sense. He didn't do drugs, I'd never seen him drunk, and he was his own man in every respect.

  “Okay,” I said, “first give me a rundown on what clubs are hot.”

  “Hot depends on what you're after. You've got four areas of the city: SoMa, the Tenderloin, the Mission, and North Beach. You'll find different kinds of people and clubs in each.” He began a description of individual ones so detailed that I stopped him before he finished with SoMa.

  “Let's shorten the process. Have you ever heard of Russ Auerbach? He owns Club Turk, among others.”

  He thought for a moment. “Is that the guy … Yeah, he owns Napoli in North Beach. Little guy, curly brown hair, his face kind of reminds me of a chipmunk's. Likes to play host, circulates from table to table—oozes from table to table, Sweet Charlotte would say. I think he's got a club in the Mission and End of the Line in SoMa, but we don't go there. And the one you mentioned in the Tenderloin—Club Turk—has a weird reputation.”

  “How so?”

  “Nobody talks specifics, but a lot of movers and shakers frequent it.”

  “Strange area for the power brokers.”

  “Strange area, period. We steer clear of it.”

  “Can you describe Auerbach in more detail?”

  “Well, he's really kind of ordinary. Glasses? No. But he squints, like he might be wearing contacts that irritate his eyes. No facial hair or distinguishing marks. Dresses Italian-casual, lots of jewelry.”

  “Who does?” Keim's voice asked.

  Mick looked toward the door. “About time. We're talking about Russ Auerbach.”

  “Who?”

  “The oozer from Napoli.”

  “Oh, him. Why, for God's sake?” She came into the office and perched on the arm of Mick's chair, slipping her arm around his shoulders.

  “Yeah,” he said, “why are you interested in him?”

  “A neighbor of D’Silva's says she's got something going with him, hangs out at Club Turk. Can you think of any way I can recognize him?”

  Keim said, “Why not go to one of the clubs and ask for him?”

  “I'm hoping to establish a surveillance on him, see if he'll lead me to her.”

  “Well, I don't know where you can get a photo, at least not tonight, but… Of course!” She looked at Mick. “You remember that night last month when we were waiting outside Napoli for Jessie and Matt, and Auerbach drove up?”

  He frowned, shook his head.

  “Well, he did. I remember because you'd just had your hair cut and kept complaining that the fog was ruining an expensive styling job. Anyway, Auerbach left his car with the club's valet parker. Black Porsche—about the same vintage as the one your dad drives. I got a look at its vanity plate— RUSS A 1.”

  Mick ran his hand over his blond head. “I was not complaining about my hair”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Charlotte, thanks,” I said. “Mick, when it comes time for the clubs to open, will you call all four of Auerbach's and ask when they expect him tonight? And then call me at home with the information?”

  “Sure. In the meantime, what'll you be doing?”

  “Getting ready for a hot night on the town.”

  Now I watched Auerbach enter End of the Line, then joined the queue waiting for admittance. Conversations swirled around me; from them I gathered that the majority of clubgoers were suburbanites or tourists. The couple ahead of me were describing to friends the great house they'd just bought in Walnut Creek; behind me two women were marveling at how cool this scene was compared to Saint Paul. Many of the younger people expressed concern about their ED standing up to the carding at the door.

  I hadn't even thought of presenting ED, should I get close enough to venture inside. I'd never be carded again in this lifetime. The thought made me feel both smug and a little sad.

  For reassurance, I glanced down at my clubbing outfit—a form-fitting little silver sequinned dress and black velvet coat that hadn't seen service in so long that they were right back in style. The sadness vanished. They fit as well as they had the last time I'd worn them. Not bad for an old broad of forty, as Mick was fond of calling me.

  Behind me the line grew. If Auerbach ran according to the rather loose schedule Mick had put together by calling his clubs, he'd come outside very soon and head for the Mission.

  The man in front of me turned, looked me over, and said, “Sure glad the rain's quit.” He was handsome, if you cared for the drug-lord look.

  “Uh-huh,” I replied.

  “It's hell when you've got to stand in line in the rain.”

  “Pure hell.”

  “Supposed to clear tomorrow, though, I saw it on the news. They're predicting—”

  “They can't predict.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because the weather gods jam their radar. They send out these rays, similar to what you get when you bounce a signal off a cellphone site, only more powerful.
They hate us, you know.”

  “Uh, sure.” He smiled nervously and turned away.

  Sometimes clear evidence of insanity is a great way to deflect a man's interest without bruising his feelings.

  At a few minutes before midnight I stood in the dark outside entryway of an apartment building on Guerrero Street, indulging in a largely unwarranted attack of nostalgia while watching the door of Auerbach's Mission district club, Bohemia. The owner had come directly there from SoMa. The club was small, so I'd decided against going inside and calling attention to myself. Auerbach still had one stop left to make—at Club Turk—and if he was to rendezvous with D’Silva, that would be the place.

  Newspapers and flyers littered the entry's floor, and the overhead bulb was burned out; several of the mailboxes flapped open, their locks broken. I'd rented a studio in this building near the intersection of Guerrero and Twenty-second Streets from the time I graduated from U.C. Berkeley till I bought my house. One of my first big cases had played out here. I'd walked these cracked sidewalks and dark alleys thousands of times, yet now I was a stranger.

  In those days the Mission wasn't the greatest place to live in the city, but parts of it weren't that bad, either; ethnically mixed and solidly working class, they harbored a nice sense of community. At this intersection there was a corner grocery, a Laundromat, a small bakery, and Ellen T's Bar & Grill; I patronized them all and knew their proprietors. Parking was always a hassle, but I felt safe leaving the MG on the street, and on the way to and from it I exchanged greetings with many a neighbor.

  But after I scraped together the down payment on my house and moved away, I'd heard that even this pleasant little pocket had deteriorated. Drug deals, which usually went down in the Devil's Quadrangle section bisected by Mission between Sixteenth and Twenty-fourth, went down here as well; winos lurched along the sidewalks and urinated publicly; buildings became blighted by graffiti as gang activity escalated; one by one businesses that had catered to the district's solid citizens closed their doors; and those solid citizens who could afford to move away began a rapid exodus.

  But now the character of this intersection had changed again. My old grocery store was still there, but it had changed hands and looked to be ripe for a takeover by the adjoining bar. There was an upscale restaurant on the opposite corner; the Laundromat had been replaced by a gift and card shop. A succession of clubs, the latest being Bohemia, had occupied the space that used to be Ellen T's, since the day when the dreams of the congenial couple who owned it were shattered by a robber's bullet. Tonight I'd felt disoriented and had to take a look at the number to make sure this was my former building. And no one had greeted me but a well-dressed drunk who mistook me for a hooker.

  The neon lights of the club and the soft glow from the bar and restaurant offered me no false reassurance as to my safety. The establishments catered mainly to neo-bohemians who lived in other neighborhoods or, more often, outside the city, and I hoped they were aware that this was still rough territory where simply making eye contact the wrong way could create a volatile situation.

  The rain began—lightly at first, then sheeting down and gusting into the entryway. I retreated, pulling my flimsy coat closer and shivering. A few people who had been talking on the sidewalk in front of the Lone Palm Bar scattered to their cars. Auerbach had been inside Bohemia for a long time; I wished he'd hurry up and leave for Club Turk. One good thing about this weather—it would keep the predators off the streets of the Tenderloin. Most of them, anyway.

  The area around Turk and Taylor made the Mission look like a parochial school playground. Even in the now-steady rain, miniskirted hopefuls—and not all of them women— stood under umbrellas on the corners, calling out to occupants of cars. Derelicts huddled in the shelter of closed and barred storefronts amid a welter of filthy blankets and rags. One block over, I'd passed a squad car and ambulance, their lights flashing; the paramedics were lifting a crumpled figure from the gutter to a stretcher. And scattered among the abandoned buildings and evil-smelling alleys and human misery were clubs that ranged from unadorned dives to glittering establishments where the more adventurous of the city's night crowd flocked.

  It was late enough that the patrons of the nearby theater district had dispersed, so street parking was plentiful. I waited at the comer till Auerbach pulled his Porsche to the curb and handed the keys to the valet, then made my turn and parked half a block down from Aunt Charlie's Lounge—a lavender mecca for the cross-dressing set that even I had heard of—and got out, looking askance at a large black man wandering along the sidewalk and muttering to himself. When he drew closer, I saw he was actually muttering into a walkie-talkie and recognized the familiar beret of the Guardian Angels. He nodded as he passed.

  That was all well and good, but he didn't look a match for the guy leaning against the burned-out hotel and cleaning his nails with a switchblade; and that hooker who had just given the finger to a cruising john may have been clad in chiffon, but his biceps were on a par with a heavyweight's. I glanced apprehensively at the MG, then thought, What the hell. My mechanic might think it was a gem, but to me it was just a car, and an increasingly unreliable one at best.

  I moved along the street, avoiding eye contact with passersby, concentrating on Club Turk. It occupied the ground floor of a narrow, nondescript building like most of the others on this block, and was distinguished only by a large black window shot with iridescent threads of blue, silver, pink, purple, and green, with the name spelled out in purple. When I'd first spotted it, the color scheme had struck me as familiar. Now I reached into my bag for the key card I'd found among Lee D’Silva's office effects.

  Yes, the colors were the same.

  A limo pulled to the curb in front of the club, and a group of six people in evening clothes got out, the driver sheltering them with umbrellas held in either hand. The black-clad doorman ushered them in, then waited for a couple who were leaving. Late on a midweek night, but—

  A woman was walking quickly along the opposite sidewalk, head bent against the rain, her steps staccato in high heels. Making for the club's door. Honey-blond hair lay across her cheeks and forehead, hiding her features. Her wrap, over a long, dark dress, was teal blue.

  The doorman appeared to know her, held the door as she went inside.

  I angled across the street.

  The doorman was tall and muscular—a bouncer, really—completely bald but possessed of a curiously boyish face. He looked at me with eyes that had seen everything and not been surprised by any of it, and seemed to wait for some action on my part. On impulse, I pulled out D’Silva's key card and showed it to him.

  He nodded and held the door open.

  Private club? No, not according to Mick. Maybe the card was a way of separating the regulars—the people who participated in whatever illegal activity went down there—from the uninitiated.

  I stepped into a small space so dark that, once the door closed behind me, I felt as if I'd been swallowed up by a black hole. Then I saw colors leaking around a rectangular shape—the same colors as on the key card and window. I put out my hand, felt velvet cloth, and pushed it aside.

  The room ahead of me was dark except for threads and swirls and splashes of the thematic colors. Some came from spotlights, others from metallic substances embedded in the black Plexiglas furnishings, still others from neon tubing running along the walls, ceiling, and floors. It was a typical cocktail lounge arrangement, a jazz combo playing at the far end, enveloped in a multicolored smoky haze.

  I walked toward the bar, taking careful note of the patrons. Most wore dark clothing, the spots highlighting their faces and bare skin. The women had that anorexic look termed by the press “heroin chic,” and most of the men appeared sullen and bored. The group I'd seen exiting the limo were seated in a large banquette; I recognized a movie actor and a well-known writer. Nowhere did I see Lee D’Silva.

  I sat on a stool at the end of the bar, ordered a glass of Chardonnay. When the black-clad
bartender brought it, I laid the key card down and he ran it through a charge machine. No bottles or glasses stood above bar level—nothing to mar the effect of the dazzling colors. The mirrored wall behind the bar resembled a giant iridescent spiderweb spun against a midnight sky; its strands shimmered and shifted, distorted perceptions, alternately dulled and excited the senses. I looked through the filaments at the reflection of the room behind me, scanned the patrons once more. No Lee D’Silva.

  After a while the movie actor got up and went to a black-curtained exit at the rear, presumably to use the rest rooms. He hadn't returned in five minutes, and one at a time the other members of his party followed suit. A rear exit? No, they'd have left together.

  Finally I got up, left a tip on the bar, and went that way too.

  A hallway, too brightly lighted after the room behind me. Doors, labeled Women, “Men, Employees Only. And another at the very rear. I moved toward it, saw the box with the glowing red light below the knob—the kind of security lock you find on many hotel rooms. I took the card from my pocket and ran it through; the red light went out and another glowed green. I drew back against the wall and considered.

  A private room. Lee D’Silva could be inside. If I blundered in there, she'd flee and odds were I'd never locate her again. But if I didn't go through this door, I might never come face to face with her.

  I transferred the card to my left hand, put my right into my little nightclubbing bag, and gripped my .357. Thrust the card into the box and, when the light glowed green, eased the door open.

  A concrete stairway led down to well below street level. At its bottom was another door, another security box. I went down, used the card again, and nudged the door slightly open with my foot.