the capitol building and all the other not-so-hallowed halls of state government. Still, it was a marginal neighborhood of lower income apartment houses and small business establishments. The building I wanted was an old three-story apartment house, narrow and fronted by two of the city’s wealth of shade trees, wedged between another apartment house and a cut-rate liquor store. I parked down the block, went up into the vestibule. Six mailboxes, each with a name Dymo-labeled on the front. None of the names was Lawrence Jacobs; none of them was familiar. The one on the box marked with the numeral 1, O. Barnwell, had the letters “Mgr” after it.
I tried the entrance door. Locked. But through its leaded glass panels I could see someone in the dim hallway inside-a man up on an aluminum stepladder next to a flight of stairs, changing a light bulb in a ceiling fixture. I rapped on the door with my knuckles, and when he heard that and leaned down to look my way, I gestured for him to let me in. He didn’t do it. He must have been able to see me well enough through the glass to decide I was nobody he knew or particularly cared to deal with: He made a go-away gesture and leaned back up to the ceiling fixture.
I did some more knocking, this time with my fist. And I kept on doing it, harder and louder, until the racket finally brought him down off the ladder and over to the door. He took another, scowling look at me through the glass, yanked the door open, and said angrily, “Chrissake, what’s the fuggin idea?”
“You the manager? Mr. Barnwell?”
“Yeah. But we got no vacancies-”
“I’m not looking for an apartment. I’m looking for a man who calls himself Lawrence Jacobs.”
“Who?”
“Lawrence Jacobs. He lived here around the first of November last year.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Were you the manager back then?”
“I said I never heard of him.”
He started to push the door closed. I got a shoulder up against it and pushed harder than he did, hard enough to crowd him backward and let me slide in through the opening. The hallway was clean enough but it stank of disinfectant, old wood, somebody’s chicken and garlic recipe. It stank of Barnwell, too-sweat and beer and the too- sweet odor of cheap aftershave.
Behind him, down the hall past the ladder, a door to the ground-floor front apartment opened and a skinny blond woman poked her head out. But Barnwell was too busy glaring at me to notice. He was in his late forties, lard-bellied, balding, with a tattoo on one bare forearm-the name Maggie intertwined with blue-stemmed red roses. He had eaten something with ketchup on it in the past few days: There was a streak of dried tomato red across the front of his sleeveless sweatshirt.
“What the hell you think you’re doin, pal?”
“Looking for Lawrence Jacobs. I told you that.”
“And I already told you-”
“Sure you did. Now tell me the truth.”
“Listen-”
“I will, as soon as you start to talk.”
“I don’t have to fuggin talk to you.”
“Don’t you?” I said, soft.
We looked at each other for a time. His features softened first, like wax under a flame; then the anger in his eyes cooled; and then his gaze slid away and a tic began to jump on one puffy cheek. He said, “What are you, a cop?”
“Could be. And maybe I’m somebody you want to mess with even less than a cop. Capisce, mi amico?”
He didn’t like that; I had meant it to scare him and it did. Enough so that there would be no need for me to show him the.22. He backed up a step, and he must have seen the woman hanging out of the open doorway because her jerked his head toward her and snapped, “Goddamn it, Maggie, get your ass back inside!” She gave him the finger, but she didn’t argue or waste any time pulling her head in and slamming the door. So much for blue-stemmed red roses and the sentiment that went with them.
Barnwell put his eyes back on me, still didn’t like what he saw, and let his gaze slide off sideways again. He was nervous now; the tic on his cheek had worsened. He lifted a hand to poke at it, kept the hand there as if it and the arm were a protective shield between us.
He said, “Lawrence Jacobs, right?”
“That was the name he was using.”
“Okay. Okay. But I dunno his real name, I swear it.”
“How long was he here?”
“A week or so, that’s all.”
“Come on, Mr. Barnwell, you don’t rent out apartments for a week or so. We both know that.”
“He didn’t
“With one of the other tenants?”
“Frank Tucker. He was a pal of Tucker’s.”
“Tucker isn’t one of the names on the mailboxes.”
“He moved out back in December.”
“Did he? Where to?”
“Vacaville, I think. Yeah, Vacaville.”
“Where in Vacaville?”
“I dunno.” But then he paused, and something dark and bitter flickered in his expression. “My old lady might,” he said. “I can ask her, you want.”
“You do that. But not just yet. How well do you know this Frank Tucker?”
“I don’t know him. I don’t wanna know him.”
“Why not?”
“I got reasons.”
His old lady being one of them, I thought. Maggie of the blue-stemmed roses. But there was nothing for me in his domestic problems. I asked him, “Frank Tucker his real name?”
“Far as I know.”
“What does he look like?”
“Big bastard, must weigh two-fifty, two-sixty. Arms like fuggin cement posts. Black greasy hair, like Presley used to wear his. You know?”
I knew-and I didn’t know. The description meant nothing to me. “How old?”
“Forty, forty-five.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“Said he was a truck driver.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“None of my business what he does.”
“Talk to me, Mr. Barnwell. What do you think Tucker does for his money, if it isn’t driving a truck?”
“Strong-arm stuff, okay? That’s what I think.”
“What kind of strong-arm stuff?”
“Any kind. Strikebreakin, head-bustin, shit like that.”
“What about Lawrence Jacobs? That his line of work too?”
“Nah, not him. Too small, not mean enough.”
“What does
“He never said and I never asked.”
“He just stayed here with Tucker for a week of so. Stayed in Tucker’s apartment the whole time?”
“Well, he went out most days.”
“With Tucker?”
“Nah, alone. Just crashin with Tucker. Or maybe…” Barnwell let the sentence trail away.
“Or maybe what?”
“I always thought there was somethin funny about him. Tucker, too, kind of. Queer, you know?”
“Meaning you think they had a homosexual relationship?”
