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.
And looked in at Las Vegas.
A large subterranean room, its lighting directed at green felt tables; clots of people gathered around them as dealers sent cards sliding across the felt and croupiers spun their wheels. Smoke clouds rose toward the ceiling; cocktail waitresses circulated. I heard talk and laughter and the occasional exultant gasp. I'd visited many such rooms in the state of Nevada.
But here in the state of California such rooms were illegal.
Nobody was paying attention to me. Quickly I looked around for Lee D’Silva. My breath caught when I glimpsed her, over by the roulette table—
But, no, that wasn't D’Silva. Merely a blond woman who now held her teal-blue wrap over her arm. Who really didn't resemble D’Silva at all.
Disappointment dealt my stomach the kind of weightless, hollow feeling as when an updraft slammed the Citabria. Desperately I scanned the faces of the other players. The movie actor, the writer, and their party were there. Two other people I recognized from their frequent appearances in the society pages of the local papers; another was a well-known local politician, still another a state senator.
But no D’Silva; no Auerbach, either. Of course, they could be in an office somewhere—
A hand grasped my upper arm. I looked around, tried to jerk free. The hand held. It belonged to the doorman who had earlier admitted me.
“Ms. D’Silva,” he said with icy politeness, “you'd better come with me.”
Russ Auerbach was leaning over a table in a small office, hands flat on either side of a computerized spreadsheet—studying the night's take, no doubt. Up close he looked older and more tired than he had from a distance: just another overextended small businessman at the end of a hard day. He kept his eyes on the sheet and sighed heavily.
“Jesus, Lee,” he said, “what're you doing here—and why're you wearing that stupid disguise again? Grow up, will you?”
The doorman had thrust me into the room and withdrawn without relieving me of the key card or attempting to search my purse. Now I reached behind my back and shot the dead bolt while bringing out the .357.
“Wrong woman, Mr. Auerbach.”
Slowly he straightened, small eyes narrowing as he focused first on the gun and then on my face. He licked dry lips before he asked, “Who're you? And what is this?”
“My name's Sharon McCone. Does that mean anything to you?”
“… You're the woman Lee wanted to work for. Did she give you her key card? If that crazy bitch sent you to threaten me—”
“I'm here about Lee, not on her behalf.”
“And the card? Where'd you get it?”
“I found it among some of her things.”
“I should've taken it away from her, but instead I just canceled it. When you settled your drink tab, it was rejected, and the bartender recognized the name that came up on the account and called me. I told him to let her drink her wine and then ask her to leave.”
“He didn't, though.”
“No, you headed back too fast for him. He called me again, I said to pass you—her—through and get Danny to bring her to me. Then we'd have it out once and for all.” He paused, eyes on the .357 again. “Why the gun?”
“I don't know you, don't know what your relationship with Lee D’Silva is. If you're a friend of hers, we've got problems.”
“I'm not her friend. And there isn't any relationship—not since a couple, three weeks ago.”
I studied him for a moment, then slipped the gun back into my bag and took out one of my cards. “Mr. Auerbach, why don't we sit down. It's in our best interests to talk.”
Russ Auerbach had met Lee D’Silva at the bar of Club Turk the previous November. She told him she frequented a number of the establishments on the slope of Nob Hill. “Likes her nightlife kind of off center and gritty,” he said, “same as she likes her sex life.”
“Meaning?”
“I don't talk about my women, past or present.”
“Come on, Russ. You know you want to tell me.”
He smiled, showing small, pointed teeth. “Maybe I do. Broad put me through hell. Lee likes her sex rough—and plentiful. When I started with her, I knew it was a nonexclusive. She goes with a lot of guys.”
“She take you home?” I was wondering if he'd seen her collections, and what he thought of them.
“Never. She said she had a flat on Potrero Hill, but it was off limits. One place that was hers alone. I thought that meant she was married or had a live-in, though when she'd’ve had time for either I couldn't imagine. Anyway, she usually came to my place, or we did it here in the office.”
I looked around the little room.
Auerbach said, “She wasn't into comfort.”
“Apparently not.”
“Wasn't even a relationship, really. I didn't take her to dinner; we didn't go anyplace together. All we did was fuck and talk, mainly about her. She fascinated me, but I didn't really like her.”
“What fascinated you, aside from the obvious?”
“Before we go any further with this, tell me why you're interested in her. Did you hire her and get screwed over?”
“I didn't hire her, and because of that she screwed me over.”
“Welcome to the club—no pun intended.”
“Let's get back to what fascinated you—and what she did to you.”
“Okay. Lee's a very driven person, probably the most driven I've ever met. Flat-out perfectionist. Everything she does, she has to do it right; she doesn't cut herself any slack, ever. And she has these mood swings from one extreme to the other, with absolutely no middle ground. When she's down, she's really harsh on herself, and when she's up … Well, then it's like she's a completely different person. She flies an airplane, you know that?”
I nodded.
“Well, that's one example. She can fly a fuckin’
airplane,
for Christ's sake, but it's not good enough because it's the wrong kind of plane. The one she wants to fly is more difficult to learn to land, and she's got it into her head that that's what she's got to do, and right away. I ask her why. She says she's got to be better. Better than what? I ask. Just better, she says.”
Better than me.
Auerbach shook his head. “Jesus, I can't even get on a
jumbo jet
without slugging down about six drinks, but she thinks she's not good enough because she hasn't learned to fly this little tiny plane yet!”
“Did you ever give her money?”
“What the hell kind of a question is that? I don't have to pay for it!”
“Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you do. But while you were talking about her flying, I started wondering where she got the money to pay for it. I know her salary history, and I also know what her flat rents for. There wouldn't be much left over for flying lessons.”
“Well, I never gave her a cent, but somebody must've. She was one well-financed broad.”
“Why d'you say that?”
“Her clothes, her grooming. And I met a guy at one of my other clubs who'd gone with her; he said she'd taken him home. He couldn't remember exactly where—she drove, and he was pretty drunk—but it was some little studio, not the flat on Potrero Hill. So she was paying rent on two places.”
“Or has a place she can borrow. This guy—who is he?”
“Regular customer at Napoli. Jim something. I don't know his whole name.”
“Next time you see him, will you call me?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. Okay, you've told me why Lee fascinated you. Now, what did she do to you?”