The commissions, p.19
The Commissions, page 19
“Why would someone do that? To discredit you?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I’ll ask you the same as you asked about my situation: Who benefits?”
Ronnie clicked his tongue and pointed at me. “Good man. There may be hope for you yet.” Then he picked up his drink, took a sip of tequila, and set the glass down again. “I’ve got a client,” he said. “Name unimportant. Let’s just say not without money or influence. Who’s being blackmailed for having sex with an underage girl.”
“With a secret recording made in that room?”
“Not in that room specifically, but one with a similar setup.”
“Is he a pedophile?”
Ronnie’s face pinched as he cocked his head. “That’s the thing. I don’t think he is.”
“How can you be sure? And would it matter?”
“Well, that’s a bit of the rub in this business. You get a client, your job is to protect their interests. That said, law states that if I’m aware they’ve committed a crime, I’m legally bound to report it. So it gets sticky. To do your job you have to also investigate the hand that feeds. Question is, how far. You have to remember, the people who hire me aren’t having their best moments. This guy, for example … Let me give you the situation.”
Ronnie held up his hands as if he were showing me the size of a fish he’d caught, then he looked at me as if he were looking over the top of his glasses, only he wasn’t wearing any. “Now, mind you, this is the story as he told me, which, as much as I would like to believe in the honesty and unquestionable righteousness of the unfortunate citizens who write my checks, I took with a truckload of salt. Anywho. As my guy tells it, he’s at some highfalutin benefit auction—black tie, big checks for the right causes—and all night one of the sweet young things on the catering staff keeps giving him the eye, touching his elbow, stepping in a little extra close as she’s offering him a puff pastry. After one too many free martinis, he starts flirting back, and at the end of the night she gives him her number. The poor slob waits weeks before calling her. When finally he does, she gives him an address of a building similar to where our girl Taylor took us today. Not a dump, but also not a place so fancy you’ve got a doorman or cameras watching your coming and going—and just big enough so the other tenants aren’t too interested in anyone else’s business. When he shows up, he’s nervous. He’s never done anything like this before—” Ronnie chuckles “—which is what they always say, and I never believe. What’s important is how they say it. There’s no steadfast rule, but you read ’em with your gut. Some you know instantly not to stick a pin in, for fear the shit they’re full of will blow up all over you. Others you figure for tourists who’ve been playing in the shadows longer than they’re admitting, and have now found themselves in over their head.”
“That’s a lot of metaphors,” I said. “Which is this guy?”
Ronnie laughed. “The latter. He was as pale as a poster in a hairdresser’s window that’s been in the sun too long, and his hands were shaking when he told me. Story goes, enough time passed from when he got the number to when he calls this sweet young thing that when he gets to the apartment, he can’t be sure she’s even the same girl from the party. She’s got all the right assets in all the right places, though, so he doesn’t say no. They have their fiesta, he leaves the cash on the bedside, then they part. Three months go by, then one day a package is delivered to his office. Inside is a videotape and a note that says, ‘What will you give a girl for her sweet sixteen?’”
“Shit.”
“He spends a day or two losing his mind, then he calls me.”
“And so what do you do? Broker the payoff? How can you be sure they won’t come back for more?”
“Blackmail is a slippery game. Every situation is different. And this one is well orchestrated. They don’t offer any specifics of what they want, or the consequences if he doesn’t comply. So I have to consider maybe it’s not money they’re after. I have to ask, ‘Why this guy? Where does he have power or influence? What might they want from him that only he has?’”
“Who benefits?”
“Exactamundo. My guy’s in government, so I’ve got a few ideas how they might want to strong-arm him, but until I have more information, that’s all they are. Ideas. One thing I know is, whoever the mastermind, they’re playing a long game, and this was only their first move. Which tells me there’s a bigger scheme at work. One I don’t yet have the opera glasses to see. For now they want him to know they have something on him, and to let him stew.”
“Is it maybe because what they want is time-sensitive? And they’re waiting until a critical moment to tell him what they want done?”
Ronnie tilts his head. “Maybe. Though if it were me, and that were the aim, I would do it all at once. Videotape and demand, bing bang. ‘Act now or else.’ This way you catch him by surprise, with no time to do anything but react. But, same time, stretching it out works just as good. When it comes to existential threats, the best way to get someone to do what you want is to wear them down. Day after day, night after night, let them wake up and fall asleep wondering when the next shoe is about to fall. Waiting can drive a person mad. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in fear, but the anticipation can be worse than the punishment.” Ronnie waves his hand. “But all this is mental masturbation. Practically, letting months pass before sending the tape is just smart. Think about it. Our guy knows the location where he met the girl, and the location where he was filmed. And our blackmailers need time to cover their tracks. They have to figure he’s going to make a call to a guy like me, so by the time I come sniffing around, they’ll want to make sure there’s not one trace of the chickadee or the hidden viewing room. Still, I gotta run it all down. I get hold of the catering only to find the staff is transient and paid in cash, and that too many gigs have come and gone for anyone to remember who worked one event four, five months ago. I dig up the lease on the apartment to find it’s paid through a holding company to an agency who manages hundreds of short-term sublets. And, after bullshitting my way into the former love nest apartment, aside from new tenants, I find the secret room has been replaced with a spacious walk-in closet. I spend days running down shell companies and fake names only to end up with nothing. Which was how they planned it. Knowing I’d have to spin my wheels to confirm. ’Cause that’s the job.”
“What about the apartment we went to today?”
Ronnie held up a finger. “Now that’s where I get a leg up. The lease trail was still a runaround—which is what I spent my afternoon sniffing out—but the unit is still active. Which means I can maybe snag one of their players.”
“By using Taylor? How do you know you can trust her? That the moment she left us she didn’t report back to them? They could be shutting down the apartment as we speak.”
Ronnie shook his head. “That’s another point in my corner. The kid may be a hustler, but she’s nobody to them, just small bait they use to hook big fish. They pay one girl on the street to give another girl a pager and some keys, probably some junkie who doesn’t ask questions, and like that they’ve created an unbridgeable gap. When it’s time to hook the john, they send a page from an untraceable line with the time and info. I can chase down the pager registration—which I will, along with the source of the money that gets wired to Western Union—but dollars to lattes those will be run-arounds like all the other paper trails. Point is, street kids like Taylor are loose ends. Untrustworthy. So the people behind these kinds of operations go out of their way to make sure she can never lead back to them. But shielding themselves can work against them too, and leave them vulnerable in an entirely different way. With no direct contact, Taylor’s got no one to report to, which also means they can’t keep tabs on her. Which means chances are in my favor that the room we saw today will stay intact—at least until they finish filming their next round of big fish.” He shook his head. “As to whether they shut it down on their own accord or use other girls there, that I don’t have the manpower to watch. Even if I had eyes on the building 24-7, it’s too big a location. We’d have to know everyone coming and going in order to rule them out. Not just the tenants, but every friend, associate, and casual screw. Each of their schedules and habits. It’s too much to track. Short of renting the room across the hall and doing round-the-clock surveillance, our best bet is the girl.”
“But why are you so sure she’ll call you when she gets the next page?”
“Because she’s on her own out on the street. I told you, I used to be on the force. I know the game. Which is how she came to me in the first place. I still have plenty of friends in the department, so I put word out that if anyone collars an underage hooker to give me a shout. Patrol picks her up, and rather than book her they call me. Saves them the paperwork, and now I owe them a favor. Whether she pans out is the risk I have to take. Most of the time these things go nowhere, but with Taylor I hit a bullseye. And she’s hit one with me. Normally the unies collar her and she gets thrown into the system. But now she’s got a chip to bargain with. She now has more allegiance to me than to the faceless pimps who she’s just discovered have been secretly filming her. Faced with Social Services or keeping her freedom for telling me what she knows, it’s a no-brainer.”
“But how can you be sure the room Taylor took us to is connected with your client?”
“That’s a fair question. And truth is, I can’t. But think about it: What are the odds that two identical setups are operating at the same time in the same general locale? And there’s another thing. You remember when she mentioned a cop named Zoro, and you mused whether she might have been talking about Inspector Martin Zorn?”
“I do. I also remember that of everything we saw and heard in that room, his name was the only thing that made your head whip around.”
“Good catch,” Ronnie said. “And you’re right. Because Inspector Martin Zorn wasn’t always an inspector. Back in the day, he used to be a beat cop in the Tenderloin. And my former partner.”
City Hall, South San Francisco – Commissioned by Arlene Pred, who worked here as a clerk for thirty-six years
22
THE SWITCHBOARD
Agreeing that we were both cold and that the firepit was no match for the wind on the edge of a continent, Ronnie and I extinguished the pit and moved inside. The fire I’d started earlier in the wood-burning stove was now just coals, but they were still hot enough that with a little kindling and a fresh log, flames jumped quickly to life and the iron potbelly quickly began to radiate heat.
“When you’re fresh out of the academy,” Ronnie said, sorting the quartered hunks of wood in the bin, already preparing the next piece to feed the fire, “you get paired with a veteran, otherwise it’s the blind leading the blind. Assignments change every morning, until you get the ropes. Then, after about a year, you start settling in with a steady partner. That was me and Zorn, our first assignment the Loin.”
“Sounds like a rough beat to cut your teeth on,” I said.
“Maybe not as bad as you’d think, but not the cushy beat of the Richmond where you were picked up. The Loin was where every runaway kid who fell through the cracks landed. Rape, hooking, and boatloads of drugs. Crack was queen. Smack, too. Every day, people OD’ing on the streets, and most of the time we were playing cleanup. You remember Taylor talking about The Nest?”
“The youth center.”
“It’s run by Faith Chadwick—you heard of her?”
“I have. She’s a wealthy philanthropist and, according to Larissa, an all-around saint.”
“Yeah, well, depends on your definition of saint. She and her late husband, Joe Chadwick, made a small fortune in downtown commercial real estate. His story—at least to start—is less interesting. White kid from a good family. Daddy gave him a fortune to play monopoly. Her story, on the other hand …” Ronnie snorted and drank his tequila.
“Faith Chadwick was an original hippie,” Ronnie said, leaning back and settling in. “I know it’s fashionable to glorify the Summer of Love, but from what I hear, it was a shit show. Can’t say I think very highly of what’s become the tie-dye amusement park of Haight Street these days, but I’ll take Hippie Disney Land over what it used to be. Back in the late sixties, so many kids were pouring into the Haight, there wasn’t anywhere for them to go. A guy named Al Rinker started what he called the Switchboard. He wrangled local residents to offer up their extra rooms or couches to the flower children—though in truth they weren’t so hard to wrangle, which is a subject I’ll get back to. If you were fresh in town and wanted a place to sleep, or were a kid living on the street and needed a shower, the Switchboard would connect you to these generous locals he called Crash Hosts. The service was a quick hit. In part because Al posted flyers on every telephone pole he could staple into, but also through word of mouth. Back then, all you had to say was ‘three-eight-eight-seven-thousand,’ and if you were more than a day off the bus, you knew it was the number for the Switchboard.
“I wasn’t wearing the uniform back then, so I can’t say firsthand, but I think maybe for a time it did some folks some good. Operations were run out of a storefront on Fell Street by volunteers, and rent was funded by donations. But like all good days, theirs were short-lived. By the early seventies, operations had devolved into an abandoned bus and one stoned Okie, and what had begun as an idealistic community service had degraded into what you can probably guess was the most base of human impulses. Most of the Crash Hosts turned out to be chickenhawks looking to prey on fresh young chickens—and that went for males and females, on both sides. A host would invite a kid in, give them a hot meal, a shower, fresh clothes, then offer to tuck them in for the night. Occasionally the arrangement might evolve into a twisted mutually beneficial arrangement—room and board and maybe some pocket money in exchange for sex—but after a week or maybe three, would inevitably end with the chicken absconding with an armload of the hawk’s valuables.
“Which brings us to our now-notable community philanthropist Faith Chadwick, who was one such chicken. As a teenage runaway on the streets of San Francisco, she made use of the Switchboard’s services—which fared as well as you might expect. Over and over, her Crash Hosts attempted to exploit her for sex, sometimes through force.
“Now, if you’re to believe the Chadwick party line, these experiences are what led our dear Faith to open The Nest, hers ultimately being a storybook San Francisco tale: destitute young waif rises from the streets to meet her Prince Charming and become one of the most influential commercial real estate developers in the city. And to show how she hasn’t forgotten her past, she donates one of her buildings to be a youth center.”
“Only one of her kids kills her husband.”
“Which is why I said Joe’s story began a lot less interesting than it ended.”
A log shifted in the wood-burning stove, and Ronnie reflexively reached forward, opened the door, and used the poker to stoke the glowing coals.
“The Nest opened in 1990,” Ronnie said, closing the stove door and settling back onto the couch, “which was the same year Zorn and I got paired up and assigned to the Loin. We’d both been on the force about a year, but it was our first steady partnership. Like I said, the neighborhood was the bottom end for anyone on the street. And as far as services for youth, there wasn’t much. The Switchboard was long gone—which was for the best, and, if it had managed any good, served as a lesson for future enterprises not to accept private donations for what had essentially amounted to ‘pay-to-play’ privileges for degenerates. You had Glide and Saint Anthony’s, who offered daily soup kitchens, and you had Hospitality House, who offered informal counseling and arts and crafts. You had Huckleberry House, who offered beds, but they required parental consent, which, for the majority of kids on the street, was no offer at all. Then you had Larkin Street Services, which was the first to offer no-strings housing. But The Nest, that was the first all-inclusive facility. And it all came about because of Faith Chadwick’s experience with the Switchboard.”
Ronnie was on a roll, and I wasn’t about to stop him.
“A portion of the Chadwicks’ holdings were a string of former hotels and SRO’s,” he said, once again looking at me again over the top of glasses he wasn’t wearing. “Single-room-occupancy hotels, if you don’t know, all in the Tenderloin, and they’d converted one of them into a working commune for runaways. At first they took a lot of flak—‘Real estate tycoons evict low-income residents’ kinda reactionary rattle—but they did their best to relocate as many of the residents into their other buildings, and after buying out full-page ads in the Chron promoting their philanthropy, the chatter eventually died down. Such is what having money affords you. Even still, the kids were the ones who took the real convincing. Teens like Taylor, they don’t end up on the street because they like it—or because they trust authority. Having been on the streets herself, Faith Chadwick understood this, which was how she knew the only way to help these kids was to meet them where they were at. Nest volunteers walked the Loin offering food packs and first-aid kits. To the young females, who they knew they couldn’t stop from turning tricks, they offered condoms and pregnancy tests. They did this all with no pressure to get sober or accept made-up grandpas-in-the-sky, but always with an invitation to pop by for a meal and bed if they wanted. It’s not popular with the political correctos these days to use this analogy, but kids on the street, they’re like feral cats. You can’t just walk up and pet them. You gotta put out a saucer of milk and walk away. Let them come to you.
