I LEFT NICK’S house and drove straight to that coffee shop on the North Trail next to New College. Before I started knocking on doors, asking about a beautiful young woman named Maya, I wanted to find out about my employer: Nick Zavala.
I ordered a double espresso, loaded it with sugar, and opened my laptop. Google had a few thousand answers for me. From what I read, Nick was being straight with me. He’d owned a string of sex shops all over New England, not just Boston. He sold out after 9/11 and moved to Florida, first Naples, then Sarasota. He also held a couple of patents on dildos he’d invented. The man had to be loaded. His house on the bay and the Lexus was nothing for someone like him. He had been married twice, divorced twice. One of his ex-wives had died of breast cancer ten years ago, about the time he’d bought the house in Sarasota, according to the County Property Assessors website.
I found nothing on the first wife and nothing on any children. Nothing about Maya Zavala or anyone else connected to him. That was a little strange, but it wasn’t unusual. I Googled Maya. Nothing. Not a singe entry except her Facebook page, which was closed to those outside her circle of friends. No images, no papers, no records. Nothing from New College, nothing in the local paper or any other paper, no web or blog mentioned her name. Nothing.
I drank my coffee and got back in my car. I checked the money in the envelope. It was scary. I had never seen so many clean hundreds in my life. I didn’t count them but it sure as hell looked like ten grand. I shoved the envelope under my seat and drove to the address Nick had given me.
The house was across the Trail on the corner of Old Bradenton Road and 47th, a couple of blocks from the greyhound racetrack. It was an old wooden house with a lot of windows, looked handmade. Everything in the neighborhood was old and neglected. Probably the only part of town the housing boom skipped over.
There were three cars in the driveway, an ’89 Toyota Corolla, a Nissan pickup, and a ’70s Mercedes diesel with flat tires and the windows open. There were three bicycles on the ground by the front door. All the plants in the yard were overgrown. Kudzu was overtaking the oak tree and the side fence. A black cat slept by the recycling bins that were full of empty beer cans.
I knocked on the door. There was music. Sounded like the Grateful Dead. I knocked again. Nothing. I pushed the door open real slow.
I called out, “Hello?”
Bits of conversation and laughter came over the music.
“Hello?” The place stank of cigarette smoke, pot, incense, and dirty socks. It was a mess. Three young men and two young women were sprawled on a set of couches in the living room. They looked as if they’d just been pulled out of Haight-Ashbury circa 1968.
“Hey, man, just come on in.” The guy with the long red hair and wiry glasses sat up. He looked just like a male version of Janis Joplin. The others stopped talking. One of the women, the small one with the paisley headband, turned the volume down on the stereo.
“Who’re you, man?” one of the other guys said. He was chunky with curly hair—Jerry Garcia.
“I’m a friend of Maya’s,” I said.
They fell silent. The girl with the paisley headband looked at Janis Joplin and back at me. “You’re a cop,” she said. “Don’t you have to identify yourself or something?”
“You got a warrant?” Janis Joplin said.
“I’m not a cop. I’m a friend of her family’s.”
They stared at each other, at me, their red glassy eyes focusing back and forth like they didn’t know where to park themselves.
“You look like a cop,” Jerry Garcia said.
“You smell like a cop,” Janis Joplin said. That threw them into a laughing fit.
I took a deep breath.
“We don’t know shit,” Paisley said.
“She lives here. You mind telling me about it?”
“Dude,” Janis Joplin said. “We don’t know shit. That’s what she just said. She lived here for like five months. She kept to herself. And then she split. Fucked us up on the rent.”
“A real drag,” Jerry Garcia said.
“Where did she split to?”
Jerry Garcia shook his head. “We don’t want any hassles, man.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m not a cop. I’m a reporter and a friend of the family. They asked me to help them find her. They’re worried. I mean, what if it was your daughter who vanished?”
“No way, man.” Paisley laughed. “Like, we don’t reproduce.”
“I’m just saying. If you did.”
“But we don’t.”
“Did she leave anything behind?”
They looked at each other. I thought of two things: they were hiding something or they were just stoned and didn’t give a shit. Most likely it was the latter. I moved closer and sat on the corner of the couch. The ashtray was full of roaches and cigarette butts. There was a plastic bong on the carpet. The place was filthy. I couldn’t imagine Maya, the elegant young woman from the picture, living in a place like this.
“You seen her at school lately?” I asked.
Janis Joplin flinched, looked at Jerry Garcia.
I pulled out my phone. “Look, I could call the cops, tell them about all the dope you have lying around this place.”
“Ah, come on,” Paisley said. “Uncool.”
“Tell me about Maya?”
“She had Hannah’s room,” Janice Joplin said and glanced at Jerry Garcia. “She was here for like what, four or five months?”
“Then what happened?”
Janice Joplin shook his head. “Dude, she just split. People come and go from this house all the time.”
“Can’t keep track, man,” Jerry Garcia added.
“And you don’t know where she went,” I said.
Janis Joplin grinned. “I’m not her father, man.”
“Where’s Hannah?”
They looked at each other. Jerry Garcia shrugged. “She’s at school.”
A hippy flophouse. Who knew who held the lease, maybe Janis. Maybe no one. People came and went, paid and stayed, no strings attached.
It was obvious I wasn’t going to get anywhere with these clowns. I walked out. A girl in a loose cotton skirt and a tie-dye t-shirt was just getting off her bike in front of the house.
“Are you Hannah?”
She smiled. “That’s me.”
“I was looking for Maya. The guys in the house said you might know where she is?”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m with the UC Davis graduate school. Microbiology.”
She looked me up and down. “For real?”
I nodded. “We haven’t heard from her since we accepted her into the program.”
Hannah chuckled, curled a strand of hair behind her ear. “You must really want her.”
“We certainly do.”
She tilted her head to the side and bit her fingernail.
“So how long did she live here, anyway?”
She raised her eyes. “She never really lived here.”
“Really?”
“She just used it as an address. She came and got her mail every week and gave Kirk a check every month.”
“Who’s Kirk?”
“The guy with the red hair.” The Janis Joplin character.
“So what happened?”
She shrugged. “She just stopped coming by, I guess. I mean, I don’t really know her.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. Like a month ago. Or two. I didn’t pay any attention.”
“Do you know where she lives now?”
She dropped her head and looked away. “She has a boyfriend.”
“Oh.” I laughed. “They moved in together.”
She nodded.
“Do you know his name?”
“Mike.”
“Does he go to New College?”
She shook her head. “He’s older. He works, I guess.”
“What’s Mike’s last name?”
“Mike … Baseman or Bossman or Boseman or something like that. It started with a B and ended with man. Something like that.”
“So she paid rent here but lived with this guy.”
“I guess she didn’t want her parents to know she was living with him.”
“So you know where Mike lives?”
“I think Siesta.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded and glanced past me at the house.
“Do you know where on Siesta?” Siesta Key was Sarasota’s beach paradise—every year it was voted best beach in the universe by some magazine or another.
She shook her head. “No, but I heard Maya say it was a great place. She said it was like the real Florida. Whatever that means.”