Epitaphs Page 13

  Shorter pause this time. “Hold on.” Then, “Go ahead.”

  I spelled the name for him. Italian names are easy enough to spell, and not just for another Italian; you can work out most of them phonetically with no trouble. Too many non-Italians don’t even bother to try.

  “Anything else?”

  “While Barkley’s at it, he might see if there’s any criminal record on a Dick—probably Richard—Morris, works for Jeffcoat Electric in San Rafael.”

  “Morris, yeah.”

  “Thanks, Eb. Have Barkley call me when he’s got the dope, on my car phone or at the office. That way you won’t have to hassle with it. I need it as fast as he can oblige.”

  “Don’t you always?”

  I let that go. “Any calls, anything going on this morning?”

  “Nothing for you.”

  “Eb ... listen, you know we have to talk. If we could just sit down together—”

  “I got to go,” he said.

  “Wait, don’t hang up—”

  He hung up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  BOLINAS IS SOME thirty miles from San Rafael, the shortest route to it from there being due west out Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to Olema and then south through the Olema Valley. It’s a pretty drive, past redwood forests and over rolling hills and through fir and eucalyptus groves—or it is when your head isn’t clogged with business and personal matters. Today the road could have wound across the cratered surface of the moon for all the attention I paid to the surroundings.

  Once you come out of Olema Valley, the Bolinas Lagoon —a sanctuary for marine bird life, thanks to the Audubon Society—opens up straight ahead. The main road skirts the lagoon to the east and takes you into Stinson Beach; a branch to the right leads out onto a two-mile-long sandspit, at the tip of which is Bolinas. The village is well over a century old, a long-ago lumber and shipbuilding center from which schooners ran a regular schedule to and from San Francisco. Nowadays it’s the kind of moldering isolated seacoast hamlet that tourists refer to as quaint, that attracts artists and societal misfits and dropouts of one stripe or another, and that breeds distrust of outsiders. Bolinas’s provincial attitudes are such that there are no road signs in West Marin telling you how to get there or when you’ve arrived. Whenever the county puts one up, some local goes out and rips it down.

  It had been years since I’d been out there, but nothing much had changed. The scattershot architecture looked the same: Victorian cottages, beach cottages, sagging frame and brown-shingle houses, sea shanties, an occasional newer ranch-style home, and just plain shacks. There is a certain charm to the place on days like this one, when the sky is darkly overcast and the wind blows hard and wet with salt mist and few people are out and about. Come here on a sunny summer weekend, though, when it’s packed with gawking sightseers and packs of teenagers and beer-guzzling surfers and sullen residents, and you won’t find it half so engaging.

  Once the Olema-Bolinas Road passes through the two-block business section, it narrows considerably and undergoes a name change to Wharf Road. A fifth of a mile is all there is of Wharf Road; it ends at a narrow beach where the lagoon meets Bolinas Bay. Funky cottages and shanties line it on the lagoon side, most of them built on pilings, some set behind a high, continuous board fence. Only one of the dwellings was pink, a kind of deep-rose pink—the last of the ones hidden behind the fence.

  The opposite side of the street was reserved for parking. I found a space and walked back to where a doorway was set into the fence in front of the pink cottage. The door was shut, but not locked; I went on through, into a tiny yard bloated with weeds and brush and a single gnarled buckeye tree in full bloom. The cottage was old and run-down and badly in need of a coat of paint, pink or otherwise. A shutter hung at a drunken angle from one window, fiapping a little in the rough wind. The tide was out and the smell of mudflats came up sharp and fishy from underneath.

  There was no porch, just a single step up to a warped pink door. I looked for a bell push, didn’t find one, and worked my knuckles against the door panel. When that failed to bring anybody I pounded the wood with the heel of my hand, hard enough to rattle the door in its frame. No one responded to that either.

  I did a slow turn to check the immediate vicinity. Right-angle extensions of the fence enclosed the yard and the cottage on its two sides, down to where a low bank sloped to the waterline. To the north, the upper story of a doddery Victorian was visible above the fence, but its windows were all blind with shades. I moved around on that side of the cottage, to where I could see its back side. Rectangular deck on barnacled pilings, with stairs leading down to a short, empty pier. Nobody on the deck, nobody on the pier, nobody on a narrow boat channel dredged through the mudflats beyond.

  At the front door again, I tried the knob. Locked—but the lock wasn’t much. I had it open in less than a minute. There had been a time when breaking-and-entering a stranger’s empty house was something I would not have done. The three-month Deer Run ordeal had lowered some of my loftier principles. Maybe the loss of patience and certain scruples have made me a lesser man, but ironically it may also have made me a better detective.

  I shut the door behind me, stood looking into a long, narrow living area that extended the cottage’s full length. Sliding glass doors at the far end gave access to the deck; through them I could see all the way across the lagoon to the Stinson Beach road and the hills beyond. Man’s place, this—a man who had Western-style tastes. Navajo rugs on the bare floor, horse prints and riding paraphernalia as wall decorations, square-block furniture with slung leather seats and backs, an old-fashioned potbellied stove complete with a Rube Goldberg flue arrangement, a big wet bar faced with half a dozen hand-tooled leather stools, a stereo system and a rack of CDs that would no doubt be mostly country and western. All very casual and haphazardly arranged, pieced together by the kind of individual who has no interest in how a place looks to anyone other than himself.

  It wasn’t warm in here, but neither did the room contain any of the day’s chill. I laid a hand on the stove’s rotund side. Warmish. A fire had been built inside earlier this morning.

  Off the living room at the rear was the kitchen. Dirty dishes in the sink, bread crumbs and morsels of some kind of yellow cheese on the dinette table. I picked up one of the cheese things and rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger. Soft, not hard—not more than a couple of hours old. Bread and cheese: some breakfast.

  A hallway led from the kitchen to two bedrooms separated by a bathroom with ancient plumbing and a huge clawfoot tub that left little room for the other fixtures. In the larger of the bedrooms was a rumpled king-size bed and a nightstand that held a half-empty bottle of bourbon, a finger-marked glass, and an ashtray jammed with cigarette butts. Along the baseboard was a space heater. I bent to feel it. Cool to the touch. Used earlier today, though; the room still retained the warmth from it—

  Sudden banging noise out front.

  At first I thought it was the door slamming; I stood up tense, listening. Then the sound came again, and this time I recognized it: the wind smacking that broken shutter against the outer wall.

  Still alone in here ... but for how long?

  I searched the cottage quickly but thoroughly, room by room, opening drawers and closets, examining the few pieces of paper I found. There was nothing in the place to link Chet with Gianna Fornessi. Or with Ashley Hansen or any other woman. No cosmetics or lingerie or other items of female apparel. Not even the lingering scent of perfume in the bedroom to indicate that he’d shared the rumpled bed with anyone last night. Melanie Harris had said that Chet’s sexual tastes ran to D&S and S&M, but I found no evidence of that either—no bondage equipment, no autoerotic devices. The only item of a sexual nature was an unopened package of French-tickler condoms.

  Surmise: The women he brought here were one-night or one-weekend stands. If he had a wife or steady girlfriend, she had either never been here or he controlled her visits to the point where she was
not allowed to leave even a whisper of herself behind.

  Another surmise: Chet was not a full-time resident. There were no bills or canceled checks or receipts or any private papers—nothing with his full name on it. The wet bar was well stocked, but the refrigerator and pantry weren’t. The bedroom closet contained a minimal amount of clothing: two shirts, one pair of Levi’s jeans, one pair of slacks, one light jacket, one battered Stetson hat, one pair of old leather boots. This was a beach cottage all the way: weekend retreat, hideaway, party house.

  So why did he stay last night, a Thursday? And why the solitary drinking in the bedroom?

  I went back in there, without any conscious realization of why until I was standing next to the nightstand. The overflowing ashtray, the crushed-out butts ... Kools. Every one of them was a Kool.

  Bisconte, I thought.

  Not Chet—Bisconte.

  The Kools, the liquor, the bread-and-cheese breakfast ... it made sense, it felt right. And not just last night; the past couple of nights. Instead of skipping the Bay Area on the cash Melanie had brought him, he’d talked Chet into letting him hole up here for a while—give the heat time to cool, figure out what he was going to do. Maybe Chet owed him a favor, or maybe he had something on Chet, or maybe it was strictly a cash deal.

  But where did he go this morning? Short trip, returning before long? Day trip, coming back tonight? Done hiding and gone for good, on his way to parts unknown?

  Check here again later, I thought. That’s one way to find out.

  I quit the cottage, resetting the front door lock on the way. The wind seemed colder now, damper, with a taste of rain in it. The black-edged clouds confirmed that it might rain a little out here later on. Wharf Road was still empty when I stepped through the gate in the fence. I pulled my coat collar up and walked the short distance to the village’s business district.

  The first two merchants I tried were uncooperative; one said in surly tones that he didn’t know who owned the pink cottage, the other seemed to take me for a salesman and wouldn’t talk to me at all. Number three, the elderly proprietor of Bud’s Liquors, was the one I was looking for: talkative, not too inquisitive, and not so mistrustful of strangers.

  “Sure,” he said, “I know Chet. You a friend of his?”

  “No. He may have something I’m looking for.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised. He’s a promoter, Chet is.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know, knows a lot of people, gets around pretty good. You want something from him, he can probably help you out.”

  “Married, is he?”

  “Seems I heard divorced.”

  “Likes the ladies?”

  Toothy grin. “Who doesn’t?”

  “You ever see him with a young, dark, Italian girl? Early twenties, name’s Gianna?”

  “No-o. Can’t say I have.”

  “How about with a tall blonde, same age—looks Scandinavian, wears a lot of gold jewelry?”

  “Don’t sound familiar.”

  “Man named Jack? Big guy, late thirties, thick hair on his arms and chest, smokes Kools.”

  “Don’t sound familiar,” Bud said again.

  So Bisconte, if Bisconte was hiding out at the cottage, hadn’t bought his bourbon or his cigarettes from Bud. One of the other stores in the village. Or Chet had bought them for him.

  I asked, “Chet been in lately—past couple of days?”

  “Nope. He’s a weekender.”

  “Never shows up during the week?”

  “Not so’s I remember. Doesn’t come every weekend neither. Just when it suits him.”

  “He have any close friends in town?”

  “Don’t know who they are, if he does.”

  “Where could I find him on a weekday?”

  “His old man’s ranch up the coast,” Bud said. “That’s where he lives and works.”

  “The Valconazzi ranch?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I wasn’t surprised, not even a little. “Chet Valconazzi—John Valconazzi’s son.”

  “Right. You know John?”

  “Not yet. Soon maybe.”

  “Well, if Chet hasn’t got what you’re looking for, could be John does.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Could be.”

  SOMETIMES ON A CASE—not nearly often enough—you get caught up in an avalanche effect. You muddle around not finding out much, going from one lead to another, working through a blockage of small truths, half truths, outright lies, and dead ends. Then finally you get hold of something and it turns out to be a keystone: yank on it and the whole thing begins a fast tumble into place.

  I was driving past Samuel P. Taylor State Park, on my way back to San Rafael, when the car phone buzzed. Phil Barkley, Marin County sheriffs department. He had the information I’d requested through Eberhardt, though first he wanted to know if what I was working on was anything he should know about. I said it might be, but that I didn’t have enough facts yet, and sketched out the basic details for him. When I promised to notify him if and when I uncovered any evidence of illegal activities within his jurisdiction, he was satisfied.

  He said, “Okay, here’s what I’ve got. First—Richard Morris, Jeffcoat Electric. No arrest record of any kind, not even a parking ticket. Officially, he’s a model citizen.”

  “John Valconazzi?”

  “Him, we got a jacket on. Six arrests dating back twenty years, the last one eight years ago. Six convictions, four stiff fines but no jail time. All the same misdemeanor violations—California Penal Code 597, 597b, and 597j.”

  “Which are?”

  “Cruelty to animals; fighting animals or birds; possession of gamecocks for fighting purposes. Valconazzi is a cockfighter, and I mean in a big way. Raises high-class birds, sells them all over the country, fights mains and hacks on his ranch most weekends during the summer and off and on the rest of the year. He’s got a national reputation in cockfighting circles.”

  I digested this before I said, “How come eight years since his last arrest?”

  “He’s smart, that’s why,” Barkley said. “Our office has set up raids more than once since then, acting on tips from animal rights people. None of them netted us a thing.”

  “How come?”

  “Valconazzi has a tight security setup. Guards on the main entrance gate, guards patrolling his property lines whenever there’s a match in progress. All the guards are outfitted with walkie-talkies; they see a raiding party coming, they call a warning to the ranch. The way the place is built, the condition of the roads, it takes a good fifteen minutes to get to the ranch buildings from any direction—and by then they’ve shut down the fighting and masked or hidden everything illegal. They’ve got cover-up procedures down to a science. The officers in the raiding parties couldn’t find so much as a single gaff or dead rooster. All they found was a bunch of people having a picnic and coops full of live chickens. And there’s nothing illegal about raising gamecocks in California, unless you can prove the raiser is fighting them.”

  “So in effect Valconazzi’s an untouchable.”

  “Unless we raid him with helicopters and thirty or forty men, and that’s not going to happen. Cost-prohibitive on a misdemeanor; we’d never get county permission. Or unless the animal rights activists provoke him into making a mistake someday. There’ve been a couple of confrontations at his ranch. But Valconazzi’s got the trespassing law on his side; we’ve had to arrest half a dozen people who were on his property illegally, trying to break up mains.”

  “Valconazzi’s son, Chet,” I said. “He a cockfighter too?”

  “Like father, like son.”

  “Jacket on him?”

  “Nothing major,” Barkley said. “Couple of DUIs, one assault charge that didn’t amount to anything.”

  “What were the circumstances of the assault?”

  “Just a minute, I’ll check.... Woman claimed he beat her up, busted her arm. Six years ago. But she dropped the charges two da
ys later. Paid off, probably.”

  “Prostitute, by any chance?”

  “Good guess. You want her name and address?”

  “Local?”

  “L.A.”

  “Maybe later. Is John Valconazzi still married to Chet’s mother?”

  “No. She died several years ago.”

  “He remarry?”

  “No.”

  “How about Chet? Is he married?”

  “Divorced.”

  “Either of them living with a woman, would you know?”

  “No. Nothing in our records on that.”

  “How old is John?”

  “Early sixties. Let’s see ... yeah. Sixty-three last month.”

  The Old Cocksman. Not much doubt of that now. In her calendar notation Gianna hadn’t been referring to her weekend john’s sexual prowess, except maybe in a sly secondary fashion. The reference was to his passion for raising and fighting gamecocks.

  All right, so she’d evidently gone out to the Valconazzi ranch last Friday to attend another of his weekend cockfights and to ply her ancient trade. And not for the first time, because Dick Morris had met her at an earlier “gathering.” Something must have happened to her during or after her visit, probably Saturday night or early Sunday. But what? And at the ranch or somewhere else? And who was responsible? John Valconazzi, the Old Cocksman? His son, who was into S&M and who had broken a hooker’s arm once? Jack Bisconte? Or somebody else who’d been at the ranch watching a bunch of poor brainless birds rip each other into bloody shreds?

  Chapter Sixteen

  DICK MORRIS WAS NO longer at Jeffcoat Electric. Gone for the day, the receptionist said; not expected in again until Monday. She had a nice face and she wasn’t unpleasant to me, so I believed her. I didn’t even make things difficult for her by trying to pry loose Morris’s home address. She wouldn’t have given it to me anyway.

  I drove to a Shell station near the freeway on-ramp and communed with the Marin County telephone directory. There were no Dick Morrises and not too many Richard, D., or R. Morrises. Assuming he lived somewhere in the county, if not in San Rafael proper, and if he didn’t have an unlisted number, he shouldn’t be too difficult to track down. I copied all the likely Morris listings into my notebook, then sat in the car and went to work with the mobile phone.