The Ties That Bind, page 1
part #2 of Max Plank Mystery Series
The Ties That Bind
A Max Plank Novel
robert bucchianeri
Copyright © 2018 by robert bucchianeri
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Paula:
Thanks for saving this one when I was completely flummoxed.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Author Note
About the Author
Also by robert bucchianeri
One
Sarah Swan not only had the perfect name for a singer but also the looks and moves of a chanteuse.
And, more importantly, she could sing.
Her voice was fine, a smooth contralto, but she had that intangible quality that all the great ones have. At the upper ranges the notes had a little quaver, reminiscent of Judy Garland, which conveyed a deep sense of worldliness and pathos.
She sang mostly recent standards—Brel, Bacharach, the Beatles, and Sondheim, and gave each its full due, imbuing the generally downbeat lyrics with poignancy and a torchy charisma.
She was a tiny provocative thing with red hair, full lips, green eyes, and a lush figure.
The Black Canary had a ramshackle bluesy setting—a cabaret that had seen better times but clung to its dissolute charm: scuffed wood floors and tables, black and white photos of the jazz greats in action viewed through smoky prisms, a corner bar edged with strings of holiday lights, and dusty bronze candelabra illuminating the space from the black ceiling. Black canaries were sprinkled throughout the joint—little plastic and metal curios in back of the bar, paper cutouts hanging from the ceiling corners, and one large painting behind the stage, a small, round, elevated block of weathered hardwood in a jigsaw pattern.
Accompanying Ms. Swan on a spinet piano was a black man who looked to be in his late sixties and who performed without ever opening his eyes, his head swaying in time with his fingers. He hunched over the piano, which was easy for him to do, since he was, to possibly risk being politically incorrect, a hunchback. His playing was gorgeous, with surprising riffs and runs, lending vivid color to Ms. Swan’s smoky vocals. A small drum set flanked the stage, and the drummer, a wafer-thin, completely bald woman wearing slacks and a man’s white dress shirt and thin black tie, kept the music bouncing in time.
The room was full, maybe seventy people, all of whom seemed to be devotees of the singer. A good number of them leaned forward in their chairs, hanging on each elongated note or bated breath.
After she finished her set, I wandered to the bar, ordered a gin, and sidled up beside the stage next to the black curtain she and her band had disappeared behind.
A few minutes later, the curtain fluttered open, and the hunchback piano player wandered out. A cigarette was tucked between the index and middle fingers of his left hand. The fingers of his right hand were at his side, still riffing on imaginary keys. His rheumy, red-rimmed eyes skipped inquisitively around the room. He wore black leather pants, a powder blue shirt with a buttoned-up tweed vest, and a red beret tilted at a slight angle on his head.
Somehow it all worked. He was the most dapper-looking hunchback I’d ever seen.
His eyes eventually fell on me, and I nodded and raised my shot of Tanqueray to him with a little bow. He smiled, and I pointed to my glass and waved him over.
After I bought him a Blanton’s Single Barrel Kentucky Whiskey and complimented on his playing, he commended me on my good taste in music and told me to call him Q. I was sorely tempted to ask him if that was short for Quasimodo, but somehow restrained myself. As opposed to the bell-ringer of Notre Dame, Q was quite distinguished looking and the hunch in his back much less pronounced.
We adjourned to a small table near the empty stage and continued chatting about jazz and the Black Canary and the San Francisco music scene in general, of which he was sharply critical.
It turned out that two of his favorite people were also mine: Beethoven and Fats Domino. So it took a little longer than I had planned to get to the reason I’d come out to the club on this cold, rainy, fog-infested night in the first place.
In the meantime, the female drummer appeared out of the back room. As she passed our table, she placed a caressing hand on his shoulder, leaned down, and kissed him on the cheek before she left.
“Phoebe, my girl,” he whispered after her, watching her go. He turned to me and said, “Fine young lady that. And she’s got chops. Too bad about everything else outside this club.”
I raised my eyebrows and caught his eye, but he shook his head dismissively, indicating he wasn’t going to tell me more. None of my damn business for sure.
But human curiosity being what it is, we, and by that, I mean me, are always fascinated by the intimate secrets of our fellow travelers on this crazy spinning little planet at the far, far reaches of the Milky Way.
Gossip is the heart and soul of human civilization.
If anybody asks, you can tell them that Max Plank told you that.
It was just after two a.m., and the band had completed their third and final set of the night.
That left Ms. Swan alone behind the black curtain.
“She’s really good,” I said.
“Phoebe or Sarah?”
“Both. But I’m talking about the singer.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “Sarah is more than damn good. She’s one in a million. One of the best I ever worked with, and I worked with plenty, don’t you know it.”
“How long has she been at it?”
“Probably since she was a bouncing baby on her daddy’s knee. She tells me that’s all her folks ever told her was that they couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t singing the whole day through.” He paused, brought the orange-tipped paper tube full of bitter leaves to his lips and drew in a deep breath. He turned away from me and released a perfect ellipse into the air.
“They let you smoke?” I said. San Francisco has probably the strictest no smoking laws in the country, and the ban extends to all bars and nightclubs.
“Nope,” he said, and continued, “Shame that girl don’t have a record contract. Ten years ago, agents and A&R reps would have been throwing themselves at her feet, begging for a chance to make a record with her. Goddamn computers.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he was getting at, but I understood him nonetheless.
“You been playing with her a long time?”
“‘Since March sixteenth of last year.”
“Pretty precise.”
“Some days are so remarkable that you never forget them, even at my advanced state of decline.”
“You don’t look too bad, Q. In fact, you’re jaunty as hell.”
He chuckled, tapped the tip of his cigarette into a tiny plastic ashtray that he’d produced from inside his vest, coughed, and said, “Jaunty? I been called a lot a things in my life, but that’s a first.” He paused, scratching his nose with his forefinger while he seemed to be considering something. “What you here for, Max?”
“Good music.”
“Yeah. Sure. But something else, too.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You got me, Q.”
He held my eyes and waited.
“I’ve been waiting for Ms. Swan to show herself.”
“What business do you have with her?” For the first time, a defensive tone entered his voice.
“I’m afraid it’s personal. I just need to ask her a few questions.”
Q glanced at the bartender, a meaty middle-aged woman with bleached blond hair, a surprisingly large gold nose ring, and a no-nonsense manner. A look passed between them that carried a hint of a tribal secret. Outsiders beware.
“We’re like a family here. You seem like a nice guy, a respectable sort. But I have to tell you that Felix and Stanley over there,” he pointed to the front of the club, a table tucked into a dark corner where two beefy bruiser-types were playing cards, “don’t take kindly to anyone annoying Sarah.”
“Last thing I want to do is irritate anyone here.”
“What is it that you want with her?”
I considered my options. Sarah was likely to emerge from the back room any moment now, and it was a free country if I wanted to talk with her. Or I could t
“I don’t understand why you’re worrying so much about me and what I might ask Ms. Swan, Q. But I can already see what kind of man you are, and I respect that. I do need to ask her some questions. Would it make you feel better if you sat in on our little chat?”
He shot me a piercing gaze that could have pinned me to the wall like a dead insect had it the force of motion. Finally, he said, “All right. I think you’re being straight with me. You’ve been trying to play me, but if I was to guess, you don’t mean no harm. If she wants to talk to you, we’ll do it out here in front of God and me and Felix and Stanley, but none of us need listen in. If she don’t want to talk to you, then I’m politely going to ask you to leave. Understood?”
“Sounds fair.”
“I’ll go ask her if she wants to meet you.” He squashed the cigarette out in the tiny ashtray, gripped the table with both hands, and prepared to rise.
A loud cracking boom exploded from the back of the club, followed by a woman’s scream. Something heavy, metallic, clattered to the floor, and right after, something else made a gut-wrenching thudding sound. Q fell back into his chair at the same time I jumped to my feet. As the echo of the sounds reverberated throughout the room, I hurried toward the black curtain, vaguely aware of the two bulky bodies racing right behind me.
I threw back the curtain on a small room, part dressing area complete with vanity and oval mirror with lots of small photos clipped to its edges, and part storage room. Boxes of wine and liquor were stacked against the walls. The floor was painted black, the ceiling decorated with moon and star stickers lending a dusky glow to the space.
A door at the back of the room drifted open. It led to a back alley that ran behind the club.
Sarah Swan lay crumpled in the middle of the room beside a chair spilt over on its side. She was moaning softly, clutching her stomach with both hands, blood gushing over her trembling fingers.
At that moment, Felix and Stanley, followed by Q, pushed me out of the way and knelt beside the wounded singer.
I raced out the back door and into the dark alleyway.
Two
The first thing I noticed outside was how quiet it was after the chaotic panic of the room I’d just left.
There were three large dumpsters in front of me, each spilling over with garbage. A mangy black and white cat with shocked yellow eyes sat on top of one of them, his glowing eyes fixed on me, ready to pounce away.
The presence of the cat convinced me that the slim chance that whoever shot the singer was still nearby, perhaps hiding behind a dumpster, was nil.
The street beneath my feet was rough and wet, and the night air was cold, the fog thick. I paused, closed my eyes, and listened.
After just a few seconds, a sound came to me from the distance.
I squinted and tried to see through the gloom. About thirty yards away, a pair of running shoes below dark-colored jeans dangled, rising up in the air until they disappeared in the drifting fog.
I galloped forward, quickly reaching a wall made of weathered gray brick roughly seven feet high. I heard someone drop down on the other side and steps scampering away.
I searched the uneven surface for the way up and spotted gaps in the brick. I reached up and hooked my fingers around the lowest and closest rough slash and vaulted up. In seconds, I stood on top of the wall, a bleeding cut on the edge of my forefinger, a product of my haste. I spotted a fleeing figure wearing a hoodie rounding a corner maybe fifty feet ahead of me.
The alleyway was flanked by the backs of stores and industrial supply houses off Third Street and Arthur Avenue, not too far from San Francisco’s India Basin docks.
The shooter had turned on a corner lit dimly by a street lamp. The fog continued to drift close to the ground, bending and shaping the night with otherworldly shadows.
I turned and found purchase for my feet, scrambling down two steps before leaping clear of the wall. I raced around the corner and pulled up short, assessing my surroundings, searching for the hoodie.
I found myself in a concrete rhomboid roughly the size of a playground basketball court. An engineering firm’s offices lay directly in front of me, a property management outfit on my left. Ahead of me there was another narrow alleyway that, if it didn’t dead end, might spill out of this otherwise walled in space.
I stayed still and listened and, after just a few seconds, detected the sound of fumbling at a doorknob, the clink and ratchet of a key somewhere in the darkness to the left of me.
I trotted toward the noise, veering close to the concrete wall on my left--the sound of a door closing just before I reached Marco Polo Designs and then the Children’s Rescue Network and a sign for the Bacchus Management Group.
Light filtered under the door of the Children’s Network, the only evidence of life in the whole triangle. I stood in front of the metal-framed door attempting to commune telepathically, trying to force it to give up its deep, dark secrets. After that didn’t work, I knocked on the wood surface and waited. I noticed a little tarnished gold bell encased in a copper trimming to the right of the door and pressed on it for a few seconds.
I was just about to test the strength of the door with my shoulder when I heard movement inside, and then a gap opened wide enough to pull taut a thick chain anchored to the opposite wall.
A stout woman in her thirties wearing a San Francisco Giants sweatshirt with a hood and a black baseball cap turned backward looked at me with an unfriendly expression on her face.
The hoodie was red, not black. She wore purple Crocs, not black running shoes. Detective work is never that straightforward or easy, dammit.
“Evening,” I said.
She frowned. “Can I help you?”
“There’s been a shooting,” I crooked a thumb and pointed it back, “at the Black Canary. I followed someone running away, and I think they may have ended up here.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Has anyone entered here in the past few minutes?”
“No,” she said curtly.
“I thought I heard a door opening, this door right here, as a matter-of-fact.” I tapped on it with the knuckles on my left hand, driving my point home.
She didn’t seem to like that. She pulled away, as if I were about to strike her.
Wrong move, Plank. Sometimes I act a bit rashly, but jeez, an attempted murderer was on the loose, no?
She stood with her hands on her hips and assessed me through the slim opening. “No one has come in here...Mr....”
“Plank. Max. And I’m speaking with?”
“Liz. Listen, I haven’t heard a thing. Whoever you’re after isn’t here.”
“I need to take a look inside,” I said.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to say no. There are children here. They’ve been abandoned or abused. The risk to them is too great. Maybe you’re telling the truth, maybe not. Either way, I can’t let you in.”
“Police are on the way. They’ll be here soon.”
She folded her arms high on her chest, climbing up on her high horse. “Fine. I’ll talk to them then.”
“All right. Thanks for your time,” I mumbled, then turned and kicked the door hard. The chain broke, the door flew open, and I stepped inside and right up in charming girl’s shocked face.
“Sorry, Liz. But there’s a murderer on the loose, and I think he or she is hiding in here.”
“You can’t do this!” she cried and put her hands on my chest.
I shrugged her off, stepped around, and moved forward past a tiny reception area with a nice, new walnut-hued desk fronting two comfy leather chairs. There were photos of happy children playing in parks on the walls and various contact posters for social service agencies, including Contact and San Francisco Sex Information, a suicide prevention line and sexual counseling line, respectively.
