Sometime around the turn of the century in San Francisco. Times were simpler then. Cell phones had not yet gone viral. The world seemed as though it may survive humanity’s best efforts to destroy it. The Cosmos seemed smaller and more understandable. Sex, drugs and alcohol were easily available in the City and music was still music.
Chapter 1.
Some people call me Dragon, not because of my fiery breath or temperament or even because I might be sitting on a pile of gold, which I definitely am not. I got that name for the perfectly pedestrian reason that my real name is Matt Dragoni. And, as with most nicknames, you go with it or try to hide it out of embarrassment. I can live with Dragon. It beats, Matty, Drags or Gony Gonads.
I am part-time attorney and private detective working out of San Francisco and Bangkok Thailand. When I am not doing that, I mostly spend my time like today, sitting at a sidewalk café in San Francisco’s North Beach or some other place like that, sipping espresso, working on my novel and staring off into the distance. Mostly the latter. As for my novel, I began the current draft, my sixth or so (none either finished or published), about four months ago. I have reached the middle of page seven. I have however accumulated 35 pages of notes, clever sayings and obscure facts, that I am convinced some day I will integrate into the novel and win me a literary prize.
I used to be what many people call a success, a euphemism for asshole, but now I am mostly a bum. So it goes. I have a small stipend from what is left of my investments and I work now and then as a private eye and attorney hoping to eke out $1000 or so more per month to keep me in whatever it is at that moment that I crave.
Anyway, I was sitting there contemplating the appropriate simile with which to end a series of sentences that began, “[I] stood there is the shadows. It was freezing. My frozen nuts clanged against my thighs like….” I began considering something like, “ice cubes striking a cocktail glass” but was sure something like that had been done before. Suddenly a woman walked up and stood in front of my table.
If this were a noir mystery novel she would be a tall willowy blond with legs extending to heaven or some other improbable place like that. Given that when I was in my dream space my ability to switch back into reality is somewhat impaired, the appropriateness of a contest to decide the suitable metaphor or simile for where those legs actually did end up flashed through my mind.
Alas, she was not a tall willowy blond no matter how her legs connected to her body. She was short and sort of skinny. Decent breasts pressed against her jeans jacket. “Tits on a stick,” my friend Gary would call them. She also had a shiner around her left eye.
She had short spiky black hair. Actually, only some of it was black the rest was red, yellow and green. A spike in her nose holding what looked like a tiny dog biscuit (do they still do that?). The jagged edges of red, blue and green tattoos snaking up her neck above her collar and peeking out below her cuffs. Black leather leggings, metaled joints and motorcycle boots or Doc Martins, I could never tell which is which. Her face was heavily freckled and she had a small pinched nose. She looked a lot like the woman in the first two Indiana Jones films who always got into trouble that Harrison Ford got her out of and then screwed at the end of the picture.
I thought her look had gone out of style a few years ago. But, hey, this is San Francisco, weird dress never goes out of style here. Today I saw two men wearing berets and there are whole neighborhoods where people still sit around complimenting each other on their tie-dye T-shirts.
She said, “Can I sit down?”
“Depends, I am not good-looking enough or rich enough to expect an attractive woman to walk up and sit at my table. What’s up?”
“You’re The Dragon right?”
“Dragon, is enough. And, yes I am some times called that — among other less savory things, but you still did not answer my question.”
“Pino said you were a private detective.”
Pino was one of the shills that line Columbus avenue trying to entice passers-by into restaurants to eat generally atrocious, over priced, pretend Italian food.
“Pino is a fat asshole, and yes I sometimes do some detective work, but I am not very good at it.”
“That’s what Pino said. Can I sit now?” Which she did without waiting for an answer.
I looked over at the smiling Pino leaning against the parking meter and mimed a pistol shot at his head.
“Would you like a drink?”
“If you’re buying.”
She ordered a glass of Barbera. I signaled for two.
“How much do you charge?”
“$100 a day, plus expenses. Seven day minimum. Half up front and the rest when the week’s up.” In other words $350. At my level, I figured I would never see the rest of the fee or the expenses.
“That sounds reasonable”
“Like everyone seems to agree, I am not very good.”
She chuckled, said, “What are the expenses?”
“You know transportation, telephone calls , cocaine. Things like that. The usual.”
Chuckled again. “Ok, except for the cocaine.”
“What’s your name,” I ask?
“Mavis Corcoran”
Thought, “Who the fuck names their kid Mavis today?” Said, “Your shitting me, not Dawn or Sandy?”
She ignored me said, “I would like you to find my friend. He has been missing for a week.”
The drinks arrived. I took a sip of mine. She did not touch hers. Said, “Why would you pay someone like me? Why not go to the police? They have a department just for this.”
“Yeah, but they never do anything but wait and tell you to let them know if he ever shows up.”
“Did he give you that?” I said pointing at the shiner?
“Uh, no I fell at work.”
“Do you drive a Harley?” I asked?
“Huh?” “In fact I do. How did you know?”
“I’m a detective?”
“Ha, more likely a lucky guess. What happened if I said no?”
“You would be lying, and even if it were true I would have said I knew it all along.”
“So what?”
“So,” I added, “I know bullshit when I hear it. It is your right not to tell me what you do not want me to know. Your information as well as your money are what you pay me with. You get what you pay for. Why do you want to find this guy?”
“Don’t you want to know his name?”
“We’ll get to that. This is more important now.”
So she told me her story about their being lovers for a while. The last few weeks he being nervous but he would not explain why. Something about an import-export deal with Clarence Reilly. Then he disappeared and the usual, “he would have told me if he were going away.”
In my past life I had dealings with Reilly. He billed himself as an “investment advisor.” You know, he took your money and told you what you wanted to hear. If things worked out, he took some more. If it didn’t, he still had your money but did not want to know you anymore. A gangster without guns. Reilly was up there among the hall-of-fame assholes. I hoped I would not have to deal with him. It would take weeks to wash away his stink.
“Tell me, do you ride your bike in the Gay Freedom Day Parade?”
“What what does that have to do with it,” she said reddening slightly?
“Humor me.”
“Yes” she said staring defiantly in my eyes.
“You drive or ride postern?”
“Drive. My girl friend rides behind.”
“So you have a boyfriend and a girlfriend?”
“This is San Francisco, and what does that have to do with him being missing?”
“Nothing I guess, this is San Francisco.”
I took her information and entered it into my computer; his name and address, work address, friends (he did not seem to have many), same information about the girl friend and a bunch of other bullshit things to make it seem as though I had a lot of work to do. I also got his name. Mark, Mark Holland.
I asked her for photographs of Mark and of her girl-friend. She fished in her back pocket pulled out a wallet and eventually handed my two photos. The first, a little out of focus, showed a young man, a little too much hair on his head and a little too little in what passed for a mustache and a beard. He was young man thin but already showing the signs of the bloating that was to come. He was flexing a poor excuse for a bicep to accentuate for the camera the spiky dark tattoo; something abstract, nordic, who the fuck knows. I hate tattoos. I took him for about 30 years old and a big time stoner.
The girl friend was another thing altogether. Lilly Park was her name. She was as they say drop dead gorgeous. She appeared Eurasian. I wondered how many more generations in the city it would take for these racial identification characteristics to disappear. Already, most of the teenagers I see around the city had lost any distinguishing visual racial markers that I had been brought up with that identified whatever it was they were supposed to identify. Another separation from life’s comfortable moorings. Probably a good thing that it goes wherever it is that ethnic jokes went.
The photograph looked like a publicity shot. Taken from slightly above it showed blond smokey eyed beauty revealing plenty of cleavage. Said, “Those must have been some threesomes.”
Got the bitch look in return. You know the pupils crash down to pinpoints and the body goes rigid. That’s one of the differenced between men and women. Insult a man and it takes him time to work through his slow-thinking mind whether he was insulted. Then even more time to figure out whether he can take you or not. That usually gives you time to run, make a joke of it or hit him first. With women their reaction is instantaneous. You no longer have options.
Rather than risking further damage, I told her that I would take the pictures with me now and when I get home scan them into my computer and return them tomorrow. Actually I do not have a scanner. I said that just to avoid any protest from her in the matter.
Finally, I got her cell phone number and email address and asked where she works.
“I own Marky’s Tattoo Parlor on Columbus. I worked with Marky for years. He gave the place to me when he retired. Marky was a real artist.”
Thought she must have a thing for guys with that name. Said, “Oh, I was unaware that sticking needles in someone was considered an art form now.”
“Asshole”
I smiled, “so they say,” and collected the $350 fee.
I watched her walk off, skinny ass swinging in a tight, almost prissy, determined rhythm.
“I like them with a little more meat on their bones,” I thought.
Dragon’s Breath:
“Remember, I’ve got no idea what this is all about,”
Dashiell Hammett
Chapter 2.
I watched her disappear around a corner, took a sip of my wine and realized she had not paid for it. “Bitch,” I opined to no one except me. Drank the rest of my Barbera. Began on hers since she had not touched it and I was paying for it and I am opposed to wasting good, or even mediocre wine on ethnic and religious grounds, being raised Italian Catholic.
Usually tracing a missing person for the price I was being paid warranted about a half hour or so on a computer, a few telephone calls to bulk up the brief final report. A report written in a way that allowed the client to resolve any residual guilt they may be feeling by assuring that he or she had done all that could be done under the circumstances or, if the client is still mired in guilt, suggesting they pay me the rest of my fee and retain me for another week of futility. What the fee did not include, however, was any effort requiring the use of foot protecting composite material or knocking on doors.
Nevertheless, given that the sun was out and it was about as warm as it was going to get in San Francisco; I had just drank two glasses of wine; the knowledge that the missing Mark’s apartment was only about three blocks away from where I was sitting; and the urgings bubbling out of that dark and defective communication channel that ran between my brain and my groin suggesting that the extra effort could result in my observing Mavis’s tattoos closer up, I decided to knock on his door just in case Missing Mark had decided that Mavis was no longer his playmate and he was hiding from her wrath.
So, I finished the wine, packed the computer in its protective shoulder bag and signaled to Pino to put it all on my tab (which was met with a scowl and a sneer). I then got up, jay-walked across Columbus Avenue and moved on up Green Street toward Telegraph Hill.
I guess I ought to describe how I was dressed so you do not simply picture a dark blob bobbing along the sidewalk. I was dressed like a dark blob. I wore a shapeless gray-brown short overcoat with wool lining that I picked up at Goodwill, over a yellow sweat shirt with nothing written on it. I do not do advertising. Black slacks below. I don’t do jeans. On my feet are ugly orthotic enhanced shoes to coddle my non-existent arches. I don’t do sneakers or trainers of whatever those horribly expensive and garishly colored things are now called. Around my neck hung a ratty red and black wool scarf with a fringe on each end.
The sun was shining. The fabled San Francisco fogs of three decades ago a vague memory. It still, however, was about a million degrees colder in the City than in the East Bay but the temperature was still warmer than it had been in times past when one suffered through 12 months of semi-winter. Now, due in all likelihood to global warming, winter in San Francisco lasts only about seven months.
I regretted this change in the weather. Gone were the fogs that cloaked Hammitt’s Sam Spade in his daily run from his offices near the Burritt St. ditch to Jacks’s for lunch. You need a real City for mysteries, full of shadows and unhappiness. San Francisco is not a real City. It is too happy.
On the far side of Grant, Telegraph Hill rises. It is capped by that great phallus in the sky memorializing the transcendental virility of San Francisco’s Fire and Rescue personnel. The stunted cement penis also separates the residents of the sunny side of the hill from those fortunate few who actually have views of the water. These few live primarily in shacks converted over the years into luxury aeries. These luxury shacks, reachable only by stairs, cling to the side of the cliff like barn swallow nests cling to the eaves of a barn. Among these fortunate few living snug in their aeries reside some of the most unpleasant people living on the face of the earth. They are those who fervently believe that their struggles for the preservation of their water views and indolent live-styles benefit the rest of us.
Now do not get me wrong, I hate rapacious developers as much as anyone and believe that most developers should first be boiled in oil and then burnt at the stake in the middle of Union Square, but if these cliff dwellers were so concerned about the rest of us, as they would have us believe, why don’t they turn their happy huts over to the rest of us, say for two days a week, so that the rest of us can sit by the window, smoke a joint, sip some wine and stare slack jawed at the Bay bridge marching across the water into Angel Island, while the ceaseless maritime traffic in the bay pass back and forth under its soaring piers.
On the sunny side of the hill, the streets get steeper as they approach the crest of the peak. The sidewalks change into steps about half way up the hill. The houses on this side sit cheek by jowl crammed one next to each other. Built about 100 years ago as immigrant tenements, over the years they have been stuccoed, shingled, painted or wood or aluminum sided as fashions dictated. All now painted either white or some pastel shade of pink, blue or green. All except Missing Mark’s building located about where the sidewalk changes into steps. Sometime in the late 1950’s someone tore down a number of older buildings and replaced them with a dark shake sided five-story apartment in the then fashionable but utterly boring international style. It gave that side of the street the appearance of an ancient bleached jaw bone with a few molars missing.
I knew this building well. In it lived Ann Kennedy who, as serendipity dictated, lived on the same floor as Missing Mark. Ann Kennedy was a masseuse that I visited now and then. She was the type of masseuse that one finds in the back pages of monthly alternative newspapers or on Craig’s List.
Because of the steepness of the hill the entrance to the building was on the second floor, Ann and Missing Mark’s floor. Various stacks of construction material lay about as they always have as long as I had come here. But no one was ever working.
I marched up to Ann’s door first, because I thought she may have some information about her neighbor. Also, I contemplated the possibility of spending some of my fee on relaxation and release before embarking on my job. Knocked on the door and rang the bell which buzzed with that grinding sound that I hate almost more than anything I could think of.
The door opened about a foot wide. Now, if one were expecting that curvaceous, cleavage exposing, lingerie wearing, red lipped, dark-eyed beauty in the photographs that often accompany the ads, it was not Ann. Ann more resembled a reject from a model call for a Dorothea Lange photo shoot on the ravages of the Great Depression, right down to her shapeless house dress.
“Yes,” she said?
“Hi, Ann,” I said with a big smile.
I was met with a gray eyed, pupil-less stare of non-recognition.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
Thought she was either stoned or my belief in the memorability of my presence was overrated. Decided I would save some money and later resolve by hand any uncontrollable urgings I still may have. Said, “Do you know Mark Holland?”
Long stare. “No.”
“He lives on this floor. He is your neighbor,” and I gestured toward the other end of the hall.
She slowly turned her head and looked in that direction, which made no sense since she was standing in her apartment and could not see down the hall. Slowly turned back to me.
“No,” and she closed the door in my face.
Stood there wondering if I should kick the door in frustration. Decided I would only hurt my foot.
Turned went to the other end of the floor to stand in front of Missing Mark’s apartment door. Looked down at the doorknob saw scratches and splintered wood. Thought, “Uh-oh, run!”
However, like touching just to see if a sign announcing “wet paint” means what it says, I reached down to turn the doorknob just to see if what I knew to be true really was.
Dragon’s Breath:
“A good detective should be afraid…always.”
Chapter 3.
I turned the doorknob and pushed the door open slowly. I only had opened it a few inches before it was wrenched from my hand. A big guy stood there holding the door and filling all the space between the door and the door jamb. He was not too much taller than I am, but he was big, with a body poised somewhere between muscle and fat.
“What do you want?” he growled.
I stepped back. Said, “I’m looking for Mark Holland.”
“Why?”
Thought this might be a good time for a clever story. Could not think of one. Went with the truth. “I have been asked to find him.”
“Why?” again,
Still lacking clever responses, repeated, “I’ve been hired to find him.” Took a business card from my pocket handed it to him. He looked at it for a long time. Said, “A detective eh. Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk.”
I said, “If it is all the same to you, I feel better standing out here in the hall.”
The door opened a little wider. Another fat guy appeared. He had a phone pressed against his ear with one hand. In his other hand he had a gun that was pointed at me. “Get in here,” fat guy number one ordered.
In that moment I noted a strange phenomena. My clothing went instantly from dry to wet. At the same time I felt like I shit my pants. Said, “I think my chances of being shot are greater in there than standing out here in the hall.”
I flashed on how stupid that sounded. The embarrassment of shitting in my pants began to leak into my consciousness. Did not get far with either thought as they were interrupted by an explosion to the side of my face. As I toppled toward the floor, my first thought was to protect my computer. The second was that I might be dead.
Thought I was shot. Actually Fat Guy One suddenly had reached out with his ham sized hand and slapped me aside my head as they say. His heavy ring raked across my jaw.
Before landing on the floor, I was grabbed and dragged into the room. I looked down the hall in the vain hope that Ann had seen what happened and would call the cops. No such chance.
I was thrown onto a bean bag chair on the floor. Thought “Who the fuck still has a bean bag chair?” Said “Who the fuck has a bean bag chair any more?” But did not get it all out as the pain had finally hit and I realized that I had bitten my tongue and was dribbling blood down my chin. Got out “Woo fla bee or?” before giving up and grabbing my jaw. I was bleeding there too from the ring. Said, “Shiss!” Added “Blon.” My tongue was swelling up.
Fat guy one threw me a dirty dish rag. Thought I would probably die of sepsis if it touched my open wound. Spit the blood from my mouth into the rag folded it, and pressed it against the side of my face anyway.
Fats Two was talking on the phone. Whispered to Fats One. Fats One said, “Who sent you?”
Replied something that sounded like, “that’s confidential.”
Fats one raised his fist.
I quickly responded, “Gul fren.”
“Fucking Mavis,” said SF fats.
“No, na yeh” I commented. I thought I was being clever. They ignored me
Fats Two whispered to Porky One again.
Porky asked,“Find anything yet?”
“Hired hour ago. This first stop.”
More talking on the phone and whispering. Fats Prime asked, “What did Mavis tell you?”
What I answered sounded a lot like, “Not much. He’s missing. She’s worried.”
More talking on the phone and whispering.
I said more or less, “We could save a lot of time if I just talked directly to whomever is on the phone.” Although it did not come out quite like that, I actually was getting used to speaking through my swollen tongue and frozen jaw.
They ignored me. Fats One said, “What’s she paying you — tattoos or blow jobs?” Thrilled with his cleverness he let out a surprisingly high pitched giggle.
I did not answer as I struggled with a clever comeback and failed mostly out of fear of retaliation.
He said more forcefully, “What do you charge?”
“Two hundred dollars a day. One week minimum. One half paid in advance.”
Some more whisperings into the phone. There seemed to be some disagreement.
Fats Prime finally turned to me and said, “We’d like to hire you to help us find him.”
I was gobsmacked. Wanted to say, “fuck you” or “What the fuck,” even. Said instead, “Can’t, conflict of interest.”
Prime Cut One turned red-faced and advanced on me. I quickly said, “On second thought I can probably figure a way around it.”
He stopped, smiled reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. From it he extracted 10 one hundred dollar bills and placed them in my hand not holding the towel. “You will get another thousand if you find him.”
Pocketed the money. Said,“Whose my client?”
Again with the whispering. “Me,” said First Lard Brother.
Asked, “What’s your name?”
“No name.” He scribbled on a piece of paper. Handed it to me. “My phone number. Call every evening at about five o’clock.”
“What can you tell me about Holland to help me along?”
Again the phone. The Fats One then said, “Ask Mavis. She knows more than she is telling you.”
They then both picked me up out of the bean bag and guided me toward the door.
“How do you know I won’t go to the police?”
“If you do we will have to kill you.” They both giggled in falsetto.
I knew that was bullshit but I was still scared shitless, literally and figuratively and I knew involvement of the cops was futile.
Once back in the hall, I ran to Ann’s door pounded on it and rang the awful buzzer. I do not know what I expected if she answered; to cry in her arms. No response anyway. Pictured her standing in the middle of the room staring blank eyed at the door.
Turned, grabbing the computer in one hand and the bloody rag in another, ran out of the building and back down the hill to Pino’s place.
When Pino saw me he said, “what the fuck happened?”
I ran by him and into the restaurant. Said as I passed. “Bathroom. Ice in a napkin quick.”
In the toilet I threw the rag into the waste basket. The bleeding had mostly stopped. Dropped my pants and drawers and sat. Saw that I really had shit my pants, a little not much but enough to make me groan. My hands were shaking as was the rest of me.
When I left the toilet Pino was there with the ice in a napkin. Repeated, “What the fuck happened?”
Took the napkin with the ice, pressed it to my face, said, “Later, I need a taxi right now.” Pino went into the street flagged down a cab. I got in. Gave the driver the address of my condo on Fourth Street, waved to Pino and slunk into my seat as far down as I could go.
Leave a comment