Belasco’s insistence that homeless people or kids were responsible was misdirected venom and bigotry. It was true enough that the city was infested with aggressive panhandlers, chronic drunks and drug users who used the streets and parks as public toilets and sometimes destroyed both public and private property. And gang activity was rampant in the Mission and Visitacion Valley and Bayview–Hunters Point districts. But both genuine and bogus homeless pretty much confined themselves to certain sections—Market Street downtown, the Haight, the inner Mission—and the black and Latino gangs committed their acts of violence on their own turf and mostly against one another. Even those Belasco called street punks tended to be territorial, and their acts of vandalism were generally limited to spreading graffiti and breaking into parked cars.
The kind of malicious mischief Mrs. Abbott had been subjected to didn’t have the feel or methodology of homeless, gang, or teenage troublemaking. No, it figured to be calculated to a specific purpose. Find that purpose and I’d find the person or persons responsible.
Helen Alvarez lived half a block to the west, just off Ulloa. This was a former blue-collar neighborhood, built in the thirties on what had once been windswept stretches of sand dunes. The parcels were small, the houses of mixed architectural styles and detached from one another, unlike the unesthetic shoulder-to-shoulder Dolger row houses farther inland. Built cheap, and bought cheap fifty years ago, but now worth small fortunes thanks to San Francisco’s overinflated real estate market and a steady influx of Asian families, both American and foreign born, with money to spend and a desire for a piece of the city. Long time owners like Margaret Abbott and people who had lived here for decades like Helen Alvarez were now the exceptions rather than the rule.
The Alvarez house was of stucco and similar in type and size, if not in color, to the one owned by Mrs. Abbott. It was painted a toasty brown with orange-yellow trim, a combination that made me think of a huge and artfully constructed grilled-cheese sandwich. The garage door was up and a slope-shouldered man wearing a Giants baseball cap was doing something at a workbench inside. Helen Alvarez ushered me in that way.
The slope-shouldered man was Leonard Crenshaw. A few years older than his sister and on the dour side, he had lived here with her since the death of her husband eight years ago. Leonard had offered to move in, she’d told me, to help out with chores and to keep her from being lonely. If he had a profession or a job, she hadn’t confided what it was.
“Don’t mind saying,” he said to me, “I think Helen made a mistake shelling out money to hire you.”
I didn’t tell him that I was working pro bono; neither did she. “Why is that, Mr. Crenshaw?” I asked.
“Always sticking her nose in other people’s business. Been like that her whole life. Nosy and bossy.”
“Better than putting my head in the sand like an ostrich,” Mrs. Alvarez said. She didn’t seem upset or annoyed by her brother’s remarks. I had the impression this was an old verbal tug-of-war between siblings, one that went back a lot of years through a lot of different incidents.
“Can’t just live her life and let others live theirs,” Crenshaw said. “It’s Charley Doyle should be taking care of his aunt and her problems, spending his money on expensive detectives.”
Expensive detectives, I thought. Leonard, if you only knew what some of the big agencies charge for their services. And how seldom they work pro bono, or take on cases like this one.
“Charley Doyle can barely take care of himself,” she said. “He has two brain cells and one of them is usually passed out drunk. All he cares about is gambling and liquor and cheap women.”
“A heavy gambler, is he?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so. He’s too lazy and too stupid. Besides, he plays poker with Ev Belasco and Ev is so tight he squeaks.”
Crenshaw said, “You know what’s going to happen to you, Helen, talking about people behind their backs that way. You’ll spend eternity hanging by your tongue, that’s what.”
“Better than spending eternity hanging by what you’ve been overusing all your adult life.”
“Funny. You’re a riot, you are.”
“Oh, put a sock in it, Leonard.”
He didn’t put a sock in it. He said grumpily, “Telling tales about people, hiring detectives, sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong. Next thing you know, our phone’ll start ringing in the middle of the night, somebody’ll bust one of our windows.”
“Nonsense.”
“Is it? Stir things up, you’re bound to make ’em worse. For everybody. You mark my words.”