Treasure Hunt

“Okay, that’s a good point. But even so, I want to make sure there’s a record I called and what I told you, and when. Like if I’m first, that ought to make a difference. A big difference.”

“I’m sure it will,” Tamara said. By now she had concluded she was talking to, if not a certified lunatic, then certainly someone light on a few critical synapses. “Can you tell me briefly the nature of your information?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t think so,” Virginia replied. “Not on the telephone. They’re all tapped, you know. The cops. I give you the information. They solve the crime, take all the credit, I don’t get no reward. I ain’t talkin’ to no cops.”

“I don’t think all the phones are tapped,” Tamara countered. “Not anymore.”

A brief harrumph. “Well, if you believe that… if I were you, I’d just be a lot more careful. Somebody’s listening in, I can tell you that for a fact. You’re not on a cell phone there at your office, are you?”

“No. We’ve got a landline.”

“Well, maybe that’s a little better. At least they can’t pluck it out of the air, but they can tap a landline just as easy. Especially an investigator’s office like yours.”

“I’ll try to be careful what I say, then. Maybe you can give me a few more details on your contact information, at least, and we can have someone call you back, or set up an interview.”

“I wouldn’t have them call.”

“No. Right. Of course. You said you were down on a boat at the Marina?”

Mickey had actually been out on real work, serving a subpoena on a dental hygienist named Paula Chow who had worked in the offices of Bernard Offit for six years, ending her employment with him a couple of years before. It seems that while treating female patients for TMJ or, in layman’s terms, clicking of and pain in the jaw, Dr. Offit had developed a technique that included massaging the breasts of these women. Eventually, fourteen victims of this questionable treatment came forward and pressed charges. Dr. Offit’s defense attorney, contending that this technique was indeed not just defensible but therapeutic, needed to call witnesses, such as Ms. Chow, who would testify that Dr. Offit was a fine man and a good boss, and would never have done anything so tawdry for his own sexual gratification. And, more particularly, that she had seen him administer this treatment, and that none of the patients had complained at the time, nor had there been any sexual component to it.

Mickey found Ms. Chow at her new place of employment at a dentist’s office on Clement Street, and served her for a court date the following week. He then called his sister at work to check in. She told him that right at this moment, Mickey was needed to go talk to a possibly crazy woman who lived on a boat in the Marina.

“What makes you think she’s possibly crazy?”

“You’ll see.”

So he drove out Park Presidio and around to the same Marina parking lot he’d used last Friday morning, parked, and came to the gate leading down to the boats. The sun was out by now, although the wind was brisk, and the bay was a kaleidoscope of sails skidding along over the whitecaps.

A woman stood just inside the gate with her arms crossed and an impatient look on her face. Wearing a yellow slicker over painter’s pants and boat shoes, she seemed to be in her late fifties or early sixties, with windblown hair the color and consistency of straw. “I’m Virginia. Are you the Hunt Club?” she asked him with some asperity.

Mickey flashed his disarming smile. “Not the whole thing, just pretty much its top operative.”

“Well, good,” she said. “I need someone with brains. Got some ID?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Mickey flashed her his driver’s license and gave her a Hunt Club business card. This was a long way from identifying him as a private investigator, but it seemed to satisfy her. Only after she’d perused the card for a long ten seconds did she reach into her pocket for the key to the lock. While unfastening it, she shot him a squinty look. “Can’t be too careful, you know.”

“Yes, ma’am. I couldn’t agree more.”

“There’s a lot more rape going on than people report.”

“Right.”

“People look at me, fifty-seven going on thirty I always say, and tell me I shouldn’t worry about rape, I’m too old. But you know, rape’s not a sexual crime. It’s not about sex, it’s about hate and anger. There was a woman last month, sixty-two, over in Berkeley, in a wheelchair, can you believe? Mugged and, as they say, sexually assaulted, which means raped. Anyway, that’s why I like it down here, behind this fence. Nobody gets in here doesn’t know one of the boat owners.”

“Good policy,” Mickey said.

She looked him a good hard squint in the eye for a second or two, possibly to see if he was fooling with her, but again he must have passed her scrutiny because with a “Follow me, then,” she turned and led him down to a badly misused sailboat near the end of the pier, which she stepped onto.

Then she and Mickey were seated on cracked and slightly damp cushions around the wheel. Virginia had some laundry drying, hung with clothespins from the guylines on the seaward side. From inside the galley came the sound of talk radio.

Mickey had already decided that Tamara’s call on this woman was correct, but crazy people could have good information. Still, he didn’t want to take more time than was necessary chatting here, so he crossed a leg, casual and relaxed, leaned back against the seat, gave her a smile. “So, Virginia, I understand you have some information you think might be helpful about the Dominic Como murder?”

“I think I do, yes. Do you need anything to verify the time we’re talking? Is there some official form or something we sign that I can keep a copy of?”

Mickey, feeling that maybe Tamara hadn’t sufficiently prepped him here, figuratively put on his tap dancing shoes. “Well,” he said, “I’m sure we could have you come down to the office and we could write up a statement for you to sign, and have it notarized, if it comes to that. But why would you want that exactly?”

“The reward,” she said simply. “So someone don’t steal the reward from me.”

“Ah.”

“An’ nobody tells the cops who I am. I come up with something first, and then next thing you know everybody knows it, because I told it, and suddenly nobody remembers where it first came to light. Pretty convenient, if you ask me.”

Mickey nodded, taking all of this very seriously. “All right, Virginia,” he said at length, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, if it meets with your approval. You tell me what your information is and if we both decide it’s significant or important enough, I can take you down to the office right away and we can draft and notarize your statement. Then copy it and send you back here with your copy. How does that sound?”

She gave him the thousand-yard stare again, considering. Then, making up her mind, she nodded. “I’m glad they sent somebody with brains.”

The three of them-Mickey, Tamara, and Wyatt Hunt-sat with their knees all but touching at a small table in a blessedly quiet corner of the Quiver Bar at the Epic Roasthouse, Pat Kuleto’s gorgeous new place on the Embarcadero, right at the water’s edge. It was a cocktail hour of celebration about the new work they’d picked up, Hunt springing for drinks at the end of the day.

“She was absolutely lucid,” Mickey was saying. “No question about what she saw and what it meant. And I must say, I don’t think any of us would have even thought of it.”

“So what was it?” Hunt asked.

Mickey sipped at his beer. “You really ought to guess. If only to get a feeling for how far off we all were.”

“She saw the limo out there,” Hunt said, “after it was supposedly back at Sunset.”

“Not close. Tam?”

“She heard something.”

“Nope. Way more obvious.”