Camouflage(13)
“I don’t know, I’ve always thought Roxanne was a pretty name.”
“Uh-huh,” Tamara said.
I scanned the printout. Computers are fine—I quit being a Luddite where technology is concerned a while ago—but I don’t like reading reports, files, or anything else of any length on a monitor screen. Bad for my old eyes, for one thing. But the main reason is that I’m an incurably old-fashioned paper guy. I like the look, feel, and smell of paper in all its many forms. Tamara understands and tolerates this, though she’d be happier if I took up full residence in her techno world and ruined what was left of my eyesight and developed carpal tunnel in the modern fashion.
“Dog-boarding business in Dogpatch,” I said. “Woman’s consistent in her interests anyway. And she picked the right neighborhood.”
“Should’ve called the business Dogpatch Dog Boarding. If I had a mutt, I wouldn’t take him to a place called Canine Customers.”
It wasn’t quite as cute as The Warm and Fuzzy Shop but in the same league. Consistent in that respect, too. “Neither would I.”
“Doing pretty well, though,” Tamara said, “for that kind of business. She’s got an A-one credit rating and no outstanding debts. Address is also her residence. Been there nearly seven years on a long-term lease.”
“So I see. Must’ve moved here right after she left Blodgett the second time.”
“I can call Alex and have him deliver the stuff from the Catholic Diocese. Or I could drop it off myself after work. Dogpatch isn’t far from my new crib.”
“No, I’ll do it,” I said. “I’m out of here when I finish the Bennett report. I’ll swing over there on my way home and then notify the client.”
* * *
Dogpatch is one of the city’s smallest and oldest neighborhoods—nine square blocks on the flats east of Potrero Hill (where Tamara’s new “crib” was located), one part of it bordering the once-thriving shipyards and mills on the Embarcadero at Pier 70, another part adjacent to recently upscaled Mission Hill. It has a long, rich history dating back to the 1860s, when it was home to thousands of immigrant workingmen and their families. It survived the ’06 earthquake and fire pretty much intact, one of the few neighborhoods that weren’t devastated, so it’s packed with workers’ cottages, warehouses, factories, and public buildings a century or more old.
The neighborhood had gotten pretty run-down by the late seventies, when artists, graphic designers, and other urban professionals discovered it and began the same process of gentrification that was going on in the SoMa district farther north—buying up and renovating its Victorian cottages and Edwardian flats and turning some of the old warehouses into live-work lofts and condos. Nowadays Dogpatch is a diverse mix of historical residences, restaurants and saloons, marine repair outfits, a film company called Dogpatch Studios, the two-block-long American Industrial Center, and the headquarters of the San Francisco chapter of the Hell’s Angels.
R. L. McManus’s business and residence was on 20th Street, a couple of blocks off Third, the area’s main business artery. The house was a renovated and enlarged version of one of the tall, squarish workers’ cottages, in good repair and sporting what appeared to be a recent purple and yellow paint job. It sat on a large corner lot, set farther back from the street than its neighbors and bordered by a wrought-iron fence. There were two signs on the fence in front, one on either side of an entrance gate. The larger, professionally lettered one said: Canine Customers—“A Dog’s Home Away from Home.” The smaller, homemade, was more straightforward: Room for Rent. A bulky Ford Explorer with tinted windows was parked inside a pair of closed gates; beyond it, at the end of the driveway, I had a partial glimpse of an outbuilding that would be the boarding kennels.
I pushed through the gate, went up onto the porch. Loud barking started up inside as soon as I rang the bell—a pretty large dog, judging from the deep-throated noise. After about five seconds a woman’s sharp, commanding voice said, “Quiet, Thor!” and the yammering cut off instantly in mid-bark. Well-trained animal, the best kind.
The door opened and I was looking at a diminutive woman in her mid- to late thirties with shag-cut blond hair, bright blue eyes, and an even brighter smile. Right age, but not the right woman.
The dog was sitting about a foot behind and to one side of her. A thick-chested, black and brown Rottweiler mix with yellow eyes—hot yellow eyes, like globular flames. The eyes were fastened on me, not exactly as if I were a raw hunk of chateaubriand but not friendly, either.