The Shape of Dread Page 6

  Beyond the neon strip near the hall, the streets became darker, somewhat deserted. The warehouses and light industrial concerns were shut down for the night; here and there lights blazed at one of the legion of trendy restaurants and clubs that have sprung up in SoMa, and I spotted an art gallery that appeared to be holding some sort of showing. South of Market is an eclectic neighborhood where auto repair shops and factory outlet stores vie for space with clubs and leather bars. Landmarks such as the Old Mint, the Flower Mart, China Basin, and the Moscone Convention Center attest both to the area’s rich heritage and bright future, but winos still stumble down the sidewalks, and pawnshops and transient hotels abound. I find SoMa fascinating because of its inconsistencies and contrasts, and now I wondered why I’d taken so little time to explore it.

  I turned off Bryant onto Second Street and began looking for a place to leave the MG. Although parking is relatively plentiful in that part of the city, especially after the employees of the various businesses have gone home, I was certain that South Park itself would be jammed with vehicles belonging to residents and patrons of Café Comedie. Around the corner on Brannan Street I found a space just the MG’s size and wedged it in there. Then I locked up and walked back to the entrance to the parkway-more of an alley than a street.

  South Park is a perfect example of where SoMa has been and where it’s going. Originally a fashionable retreat for the Gold Rush gentry, it began to deteriorate as early as the 1870s, when its stately Georgian homes were converted to rooming houses for Japanese immigrants. During the Depression its grassy ellipsoid was set aside by the city’s parks commission for “soapbox speeches.” I didn’t know how successful that venture was, but I did know that when I last visited it, in the early 1980s, it had been taken over by derelicts and drug dealers. But now, if the presence of Café Comedie and a couple of small eateries was any indication, the curious little parkway might eventually be restored to respectability.

  I walked between two warehouselike buildings to where the roadway split and curved around either side of the small park. A row of sycamore trees hugged its perimeter; through their bare branches I saw odd, hulking shapes that appeared to be playground equipment. Café Comedie was easy to spot among the small houses and squat functional buildings facing the park.

  It was on the far end of the north side, sandwiched between a packing company and a brightly painted Victorian. Its floodlighted brick façade was whitewashed, the mortar between painted blue; a red-white-and-blue striped canopy emblazoned with the club’s name extended out from the front door. In a small fenced-off area on the sidewalk stood two wrought-iron tables with similarly striped umbrellas. A pair of white-coated valet parking attendants waited at the curb.

  As I approached, an Audi swung around me and stopped at the canopy. One of the young men rushed forward to open the car door. I followed the well-dressed couple inside, suddenly conscious of my casual jacket and jeans. A quick glance at the other patrons reassured me, however; their attire ranged from fancy cocktail dresses and tuxedos to basic thrift-shop and L. L. Bean.

  The club was one large room-I guessed it had formerly been a warehouse-with a bar along the left wall and a raised platform at the front. Small round tables with white cloths were crammed close together; those at the rear were tiered for better visibility. A couple of waitresses were seating people-quietly because a show was in progress. I shook my head at the one who looked questioningly at me, then took a seat at the bar.

  When the bartender came up, I gave him my card and asked to speak with Mr. Larkey. He studied the card for a few seconds but didn’t comment; he was in the upper reaches of middle age and somewhat jaded looking, so I assumed nothing surprised him. When he said he’d check, I ordered a glass of sauvignon blanc and swiveled to watch the show.

  The comedian was probably in his late twenties, a big man encased in soft baby fat, with a clown’s mobile face. His first routine involved cruising the main street of Modesto on a Friday night; next he segued into a bit about a sex-starved teenager. He wasn’t all that funny, but the audience seemed to find him hilarious. Something to do with his delivery, I supposed, the contortions into which he could twist his rubberlike mouth. After a while I grew weary of watching him wander around the stage mumbling inane things, then pausing to loudly announce, “I’m hoorny!” I turned back to the bar.

  The bartender was approaching with my drink, my card still in his hand. He said, “Mr. Larkey would like to know what this is all about.”

  “Tracy Kostakos.”

  I actually succeeded in surprising him; he blinked and went away again. I sipped wine, trying to shut out the voice of the comic, who was now imitating the sex-starved kid’s father.

  After a while the bartender returned again. “Mr. Larkey will see you. He’s in his office. Through the door that says Yes.”

  I stood, leaving payment for the wine on the bar. “’Yes’?” I asked.

  “’Yes,’ meaning, ‘Yes, this is the way to the restrooms.’”

  “Cute,” I said in a tone that conveyed exactly what I thought of that.

  “Yeah, well, it goes with the territory.” He looked glumly at the howling, snorting clientele.

  As I went through the door that said Yes, the comic asked in the father’s baritone, “Just how do you explain this, son?” In a slurring falsetto he replied, “I’m hoorny!” For some reason, that brought down the house.

  Halfway down the hall beyond the restrooms, the door marked OFFICE stood partly open. I knocked, and a voice told me to come in. Jay Larkey sat on an exercise bicycle in the middle of the cluttered space; he wore a bright blue sweat suit and was pedaling furiously. When he saw me, he backpedaled and stopped. The dentist-turned-comedian-turned-club owner looked much the same as the last time I’d seen him on TV: curly brown hair that stuck out in wild tufts and cascaded down onto the nape of his neck; narrow foxlike face; mouth full of sharp little teeth that always seemed to bite off the ends of his tart, needling punch lines.

  I’d once read an interview with Larkey, in which he’d said that in order to be funny, comedy had to hurt, a la Don Rickles. I wasn’t sure I agreed with that-I dislike humor at an innocent person’s expense-but Larkey often made me laugh in spite of myself. And a friend who had been the target of one of his attacks on audience members at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe had told me that afterward Larkey had come up and thanked him for suffering such abuse. Maybe, I thought now, it was the dentist in him that made his humor vaguely sadistic.

  Tonight, however, Larkey didn’t look as if he were about to crack jokes. He glared at me, then snapped, “All right-what’s this shit about Tracy Kostakos?”

  I came all the way into the room and shut the door. “I’m working for Bobby Foster’s attorney, on the appeals process. I understand you don’t think Tracy is dead.”

  Larkey frowned, then began pedaling again. “Well, you heard wrong. At one time I did, but she’s been gone too long. If she was alive, she’d have surfaced by now. But I’ll tell you one thing: that kid didn’t kill her-he wouldn’t kill anyone. So sit down, if you can find a place.”

  I looked around. There were a couple of chairs, but they were buried under a welter of cardboard file boxes, weight-lifting equipment, discarded clothing, newspapers, and trade journals of both the entertainment industry and the dental profession. Larkey noticed my confusion, waved an arm, and said, “Take my desk chair.”

  I moved behind the desk and sat. It was mounded with papers, many of which appeared to have to do with a real-estate transaction.

  Larkey continued to pedal. “I’m doing a public-TV fundraiser on New Year’s Eve,” he said through gritted teeth. “Part of the proceeds’ll benefit the Potrero Medical Clinic-one of my charities. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I hate to go on looking like an overweight, washed-up comedian. I thought maybe I could ride off some of the Christmas flab on this thing.”

  “You don’t look overweight to me. And you’re certainly not what I’d call washed up.”r />
  “Then you must have a vision problem, as well as seriously warped perspective. I’m both, and I know it.” He paused, puffing slightly and wiping sweat from his forehead. “Thing is, I think I should care, but deep down I really don’t. I’ve got enough money, the club is turning a profit, and for the first time in my life I’m enjoying myself.”

  “You didn’t enjoy yourself when you had your TV show?”

  “Shit, no. You know what pressure you’re under in that life? The punishing schedule? The lack of privacy? Your time’s not your own, everybody wants a piece of you. When I was practicing dentistry up in Red Bluff, I would have killed for that life. But once I was actually in it…” He shook his head.

  “How long were you a dentist?”

  “Five years. My short-lived career was a disaster. I was funny, and who wants funny in their dentist? Cavities and plaque are serious stuff. So there I was, tossing out one-liners when my patients couldn’t laugh because I had my hands shoved in their mouths, cackling my head off while I was performing root canals. My practice fell off so much that I decided I might as well move down here and take a crack at the funny business.”

  “Well, you certainly succeeded.”

  “Yeah, but you pay a price for that success. I tried to warn Tracy about that, but she wouldn’t listen. Any more than I would have at her age.”

  “You were close to her?”

  “In a fatherly sort of way, like I am with all the kids who work here. I care about my people-pay them well, offer a full medical and dental package through the Potrero Clinic. Anyway, I tried to advise Tracy, be her mentor. Not that she needed one.”

  “Why not?”

  “She had her career well in hand. For a funny lady, Tracy didn’t have much of a sense of humor when it came to getting ahead in the world. Way back when she was still in junior college, she read every damn book there is on stand-up. Watched every comedy show on TB, went regularly to the clubs, the competitions. Took notes, too.”

  I’d seen the shelf of books on comedy in her bedroom; they were well thumbed.

  Larkey went on, “She was constantly refining her act. You know how she worked?”

  “I gather she created characters, like Carol Burnett.”

  “Yeah-contemporary women, the situations they find themselves in, their problems. Social commentary that made you laugh but also made you think. Offstage she’d discuss them very seriously, as if they were real people: Would Annie really do such-and-such? Was it in character for Lizzie to go out with so-and-so? When she tried out a new routine, she’d have somebody videotape it, and she’d study the tape for hours, concentrating on word choice, small nuances. She approached comedy in a scientific way.”

  “I take it that’s not how it’s usually done.”

  “Comedy’s like any other art form: it comes from deep within, it’s more intuitive than scientific. Most of us just wing it, let our material evolve. The ones who have to analyze usually don’t have much of a flair to begin with. But Tracy combined the scientific with the intuitive-with brilliant results.”

  “If she was that intent on success, do you think she would have just dropped out of sight? Everything I know about her indicates she was on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  He took his feet off the pedals, let them spin to a stop. Then he got off the bike and sat on a corner of the desk, one leg drawn up on it, half facing me. “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I wish to hell I did.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “None.”

  I leaned back in his chair, propping my feet on an open desk drawer. “I’ve been trying to think of the typical reasons a twenty-two-year-old woman disappears,” I said. “She’s on drugs, or pregnant, or suicidal. She sees her life as at a dead end, or she’s angry at her friends or family and wants to hurt them. None of those motives fits with what I know of Tracy.”

  “No.”

  “I thought of another reason: maybe her disappearance and kidnapping was staged as a publicity stunt, to further her career. But that doesn’t wash, because in order for it to have been effective, she’d have to have surfaced long before this.”

  “Right. Now she’s old, old news.”

  “Unless something went wrong with the stunt.”

  “Like what?”

  I shrugged.

  “So what’s left?” he asked.

  “Tracy’s mother has the impression something was weighing on her mind before she disappeared,” I said. “Tracy indicated that she thought she’d turned into a bad person.”

  Larkey’s eyes flickered with interest.

  I asked, “Do you know what that might have been all about?”

  He got up and moved back toward the exercise bike, but instead of riding it again, he balanced on the seat, feet on the handlebars. “Maybe the business was destroying her youthful idealism.”

  “It sounded like more than that. She mentioned a ‘sin of omission’-a situation she hadn’t dealt with that could hurt someone she cared about.”

  He was silent, compressing his lips in thought. “Ms.-what’s your name?”

  “McCone, but you can call me Sharon.”

  “Sharon, a club like this is a little world all its own…sort of a scaled down version of the real world, only it operates at a much higher level of intensity. Most of my people are young, and a fair number of them are highly creative. They thrive on excitement, drama, intrigue-and if some doesn’t come along naturally, they’ll conjure it up. So you get undercurrents, rumors, secrets. Everybody’s up to something, but they’re not letting on what it is because usually it’s pretty mundane, and if people find out, the fun’ll be over.”

  Larkey paused before continuing: “I’m used to that; Hollywood’s the same way, although the stakes are higher. So I try to ignore what goes on here. I’ve got other interests, the Potrero Medical Clinic, for instance. I keep out of what goes on here, and by and large nobody tries to drag me in on it. But just before Tracy disappeared, I had the sense something was wrong here. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the atmosphere was more frenetic than usual.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “It was just a higher level of intensity-and it didn’t feel good.”

  “Did you sense it in all your employees or just certain ones?”

  He considered. “Well, when something like that starts going around, it spreads like brushfire. But if I had to name the ones who were most caught up in it, I’d say Tracy and our bartender Marc Emmons.”

  “Tracy’s boyfriend? Not the guy at the bar tonight?”

  “God, no. Marc still works here, but that’s not him.”

  “Which one is he?”

  “Marc’s the not-terribly-funny fat boy onstage.” Larkey flashed his famous foxy grin. “Why do you think I’m back here pedaling my ass off? I can’t stand to watch him work. But it’s the kind of thing that goes over with the crowd we attract these days.”

  “He wasn’t one of your performers when Tracy disappeared?”

  “No, although he was a hopeful. I kept telling him he ought to stick to tending bar.”

  “Why on earth did you give him a chance, then?”

  “That was my partner Rob Soriano’s bright idea. He thought it would be good publicity to let him fill in for Tracy. Anguished boyfriend helps the show go on while he waits for new of his beloved.” Larkey made a disgusted face.

  “Well then, why do you keep him?”

  “What can I tell you? They like the sucker.”

  I was about to comment on the level of his clientele’s taste when the door opened and a man’s voice said, “Jay, do you have a minute to go over those loan papers?” Seeing me, the new arrival stopped on the threshold.

  He was a tall, well-built man wearing a tuxedo and steel-rimmed glasses. He held himself with soldierly precision, shoulders squared, arms and spine rigid. His hair was clipped short, in a flattop style that I’d noticed had been making a comeback in certain conservative circles of late, and w
as so uniformly dark brown that it had to have been dyed. I judged his age to be in the early fifties.

  “Speak of the devil,” Larkey murmured. More loudly, he said, “Sharon, this is Rob Soriano. Rob, Sharon McCone. She’s a private investigator working on the Bobby Foster case.”

  For a moment Soriano’s square-jawed face was blank. “Foster…oh, right. The kid who murdered Tracy Kostakos.”

  “Well, it seems there’s a difference of opinion on that-” Larkey broke off as the phone buzzed. He snatched it up and barked, “Yes?” After listening for a few seconds, he said irritably, “I’ll be right out.” As he moved toward the door, he said to Soriano and me, “Sorry. Trouble with some drunk at the bar wanting credit. I’ll be back.”

  Rob Soriano eyed me curiously. “Investigator, eh?” he finally said.

  “Yes, for All Souls Legal Cooperative.” I remained where I was, my feet still propped on the desk drawer.

  “Never heard of them.”

  “A lot of people haven’t. Mr. Soriano, did you know Tracy Kostakos?”

  “Not well. I caught her act a few times. She had a nice little talent.”

  “What about Bobby Foster?”

  “He was just one of the kids who parked cars.”

  “Are you an active partner in Café Comedie?”

  “No, I prefer to keep a low profile. My wife enjoys the glamour, such as it might be.”

  “Is it a profitable enterprise?”

  “So-so.”

  “It’s certainly crowded tonight.”

  “We manage to pack them in. Comedy’s hot in San Francisco, and people like clubs. Gives them a chance to dress up, get out, be seen doing the ‘in’ thing. But the real profit isn’t in the small independent clubs; it’s in the franchises like the Improv.”