Deadfall

Chapter Three

Nothing much happened over the next week. I avoid reading the newspapers most of the time, but I had a look at the Chronicle twice during that week; I also called Ben Klein at the Hall and talked with him. But there just weren’t any developments in the Leonard Purcell case. Or at least none that the police were admitting to. According to Klein, Tom Washburn had been unable to attach any particular significance to Purcell’s dying words, except as an obscure reference to Leonard’s brother, Kenneth Purcell, who had died in a fall this past May. None of the neighbors had seen or heard anything useful. No solid motive had surfaced. There were no suspects. Possible leads were still being checked, Klein said, but he didn’t sound confident that they would point him anywhere.

I had no real stake in the case, yet I could not keep it out of my head. You don’t watch a man die- feel a man die-and then just forget about it as if it never happened. Especially not with reruns of those nightmares every couple of nights. So I read the newspaper stories, and talked to Klein and a few other people, and found out some things about Leonard Purcell and his brother. Eberhardt thought this was morbid and a waste of time, and maybe it was. But Eberhardt has thicker skin than I do; after more than thirty years on the San Francisco cops, it’s just a job to him. Sometimes I wish it was just a job to me, too. Sometimes.

The fact that Leonard was the second member of the Purcell family to die within six months might not have interested me if his brother’s death hadn’t been the result of a fall and hadn’t also been on the odd side. Kenneth Purcell, a wealthy real estate broker and art collector, had lost his life during a Thursday-night party at his Moss Beach home. There had been a lot of drinking at this party, evidently-Kenneth had thrown it to show off a valuable antique snuff box he’d acquired-and he had done the lion’s share of it. Sometime between nine-thirty and ten he had disappeared; he hadn’t been missed until ten, by his wife Alicia. When a search of the house and immediate grounds failed to turn him up, the wife and a couple of the guests had gone out to check the cliffs at the rear of the property. His body had been caught on the rocks a hundred feet below.

There had been no witnesses to his fall. And no evidence of foul play, although Kenneth hadn’t been well liked and there were rumors that some of his real estate brokerings were of the quasi-legal variety. The official theory was that he had wandered out onto the cliffs to clear his head-it had been a cold, windy, but clear night-and lost his footing somehow. The valuable snuff box, which Kenneth had had on his person earlier, had not been found on the body; his coat pocket had been torn in the fall and presumably the box had been lost in the ocean. County coroner’s verdict: accidental death.

Klein didn’t think there was any connection between the deaths of the two brothers. Tom Washburn, on the other hand, did think so-apparently for more reasons than just those half-delirious words I had heard Leonard speak before he died. Klein hadn’t wanted to go into Washburn’s reasons but did say he’d had them checked out thoroughly. He’d also checked out Leonard thoroughly. And was satisfied that Leonard had had no violent old enemies, hadn’t professionally or personally offended or antagonized any individual or group of individuals in recent weeks, was not in serious debt to anyone, had no ties to any criminal element. His law practice had been small but thriving, with a mixed client list of gays and straights; and he was financially well off. The official police theory in his case was that he had been shot by an intruder on the hunt for money or valuables.

That was the way things stood-more or less in limbo-when I got to the office at nine o’clock on a Thursday morning, one week after the shooting. Eberhardt wasn’t in yet; he likes to keep executive hours, a habit that irritates me sometimes because the agency is mine, not his, and he wouldn’t be a part of it if I hadn’t felt sorry for him after his early retirement from the SFPD a couple of years ago and taken him in as a full partner. Still, coming in late most mornings was a minor annoyance. He was a good man to work with where and when it counted-a good friend. All things considered, the partnership had turned out much better than I’d expected it would.

I got coffee brewing on the hot plate and wished there were some way to turn the heat up; it was cold and drizzly outside and chilly in here. But no, the landlord-Sam Crawford, a cigar-smoking fat cat who owned buildings in every slum and depressed neighborhood in the city and referred to his tenants as “my people” — had decreed that the cost of heating this building was much too high. And to insure that the real estate outfit on the first floor, the Slim-Taper Shirt Company on the second floor, and us on the third floor didn’t try to countermand his dictates, he kept the furnace turned on just twelve hours each day, as required by San Francisco law, and had it regulated so that just enough heat reached the radiators to maintain a sixty-degree maximum, no matter what the weather was like outside. Consequently, on mornings like this you had to either wear heavy sweaters or keep your overcoat on while you worked. The only reason Eberhardt and I were still here was that office space was at a premium in the city these days; we couldn’t have found a place as large as this, anywhere in the general downtown area where we needed to be, for less than the eight hundred a month we were paying Crawford. The son of a bitch knew that as well as we did. If you’d asked him he would have said he was taking care of “my people” by regulating the heat instead of raising the rent. He was a cutey, he was. About as cute as a vulture on a fence post.

Without taking off my coat I sat down and poked through the papers on my desk. Not much there; things were a little lean at the moment. I had wrapped up some work for the plaintiff in a civil case yesterday, a simple skip-trace two days before that; and last Saturday I’d had the matter of Alfred Henry Umblinger, Jr., and his unpaid-for Mercedes XL wrapped up for me.

The reason Alfred Henry and his lady friend, Eileen Kyner, hadn’t shown up at her house was that they’d been on a gambling and boozing spree in Nevada. At approximately four A.M. on Saturday, they had staggered out of a casino in downtown Reno, gotten into the Mercedes parked in a nearby lot, and Alfred Henry had gunned it out into the street. Unfortunately for him, the street happened to be occupied at the time by a Reno police car on patrol. The cops up there take a dim view of drunks running into them at four A.M., particularly deadbeat drunks from California, so Alfred Henry was still in the slammer. Eileen Kyner had bailed herself out and come home; she had not bailed Alfred Henry out because, she had told the police, he (a) had lost a thousand dollars of her money playing blackjack; (b) had made a drunken pass at one of the lady blackjack dealers when he thought she’d gone off to the potty; (c) was lousy in bed anyway; and (d) deserved to rot in jail, schmuck that he was, for doing something so monumentally stupid as mating his Mercedes with a police car. The Burlingame auto dealer who actually owned the Mercedes was not amused, considering that Alfred Henry’s monumental stupidity had caused several hundred dollars’ damage to the front end of said Mercedes. Once the damage was repaired he’d either have somebody drive it back from Reno or sell it up there at a loss, just to be rid of it. As for me I got paid for my time even though I hadn’t managed to repossess the Mercedes; it wasn’t my fault Alfred Henry was a drunken schmuck as well as a deadbeat.

All I had working now was a background investigation on a guy in San Rafael who had applied to Great Western Insurance for a very large double indemnity policy on his life. Insurance companies get edgy when private individuals apply for such policies. Skeptics and cynics all, they worry that maybe there is some ulterior motive behind the application. Fraud, for instance. Such as an intention to commit suicide under the guise of a fatal accident. My job was to gather as much background material on the individual as possible and turn it over to the insurance people; I could also provide a recommendation, if I was so inclined, but they were the ones who made a final decision as to whether or not to issue a policy. If they did issue it and they got burned, they couldn’t put the onus on me. Not legally, anyhow. There were a couple of companies in the Bay Area who had got burned and who had refused to hire me anymore because of it. But I didn’t have to worry about that happening with Great Western: their chief claims adjustor, Barney Rivera, had been a poker buddy for years. He threw a good deal of business my way, and I handed it back with plenty of care.

I was looking through the application and the other papers Barney had given me yesterday when I heard the door open. I glanced up, expecting to see Eberhardt, but instead I was looking at somebody I had never expected to see again: Tom Washburn.

He said formally, “Good morning. I’d like to talk to you, if you have the time.”

“Of course, Mr. Washburn.”

He shut the door, looked briefly around the office before he came ahead to my desk. The place didn’t seem to make much of an impression on him, but that was all right: it had never impressed me either. It had once been an art studio and the owner of the studio had got permission to put in a skylight; the skylight was the place’s only attractive feature. Otherwise it was just a big room full of furniture, a couple of pieces of which-Eberhardt’s mustard-yellow fiberboard file cabinets-were pretty hideous to look at. Also hideous to look at was a hanging light fixture that just missed being obscene, intentionally on the part of its manufacturer or otherwise.

Washburn sat stiff-backed on one of the clients’ chairs, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. He was wearing black shoes, black slacks, a black shirt, and a black leather coat-a typical getup for some gays in the city. But it didn’t look right on him, and the thought struck me that it was a mourning outfit. There was no question that the death of his lover had affected him profoundly: his face was pale, haggard, with discolored pouches under his eyes; and the eyes themselves had a tragic, haunted look. I felt a sharp twinge of pity for him. I understood what he was going through, because I had known too many others who had suffered the same kind of pain. It was what I would have been going through myself if I had lost Kerry the way he had lost Leonard.

I said, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

He didn’t answer for a time. Then he seemed to shiver slightly and said, “Yes, all right. It’s cold in here.”

“The landlord’s a jerk. He won’t allow the heat turned up past sixty.”

I got up and poured two cups of coffee. When I asked him if he took anything in his he said no, just black. I gave him his cup, took mine around the desk, and reoccupied my chair. He sat holding the cup between both hands, as if they were cold; they were pale hands, delicate-looking, the skin almost translucent, so that you could see the fine blue tracery of veins running through them.

At length he said, “I came here because I want to hire you. I don’t know what else to do, who else to turn to. You were kind the night Leonard… the night it happened, and I thought…” He let the words run out and looked down into his cup, as if he might find more words in there.

“Hire me to do what, Mr. Washburn?”

“Find the man who killed Leonard.”

“There’s nothing I can do that the police aren’t doing,” I said gently. “Give them enough time and they-”

His head jerked up. “Enough time? My God, they’ve had a week, haven’t they? They haven’t found him yet. They won’t find him, damn them, because they won’t listen to me. They simply won’t listen. ”

“Listen to you about what?”

“About the phone call and the missing money,” he said. “About Leonard’s brother, Kenneth. I can’t make them believe me!”

“Take it easy,” I said, “slow down a little. You think there’s a connection between Kenneth’s death and Leonard’s?”

“I don’t think there is, I know there is.”

“How do you know it? Leonard’s last words aren’t really much to-”

“No, not that. The call last week, three days before Leonard was shot. The man on the phone.”

“What man?”

“I don’t know. A stranger-a voice I didn’t recognize.”

“He called you, this stranger?”

“No, he was calling Leonard. He thought I was Leonard.” Washburn quit talking, gave me a muddled sort of frown, shook himself like a cat, and then said, “Am I making any sense?”

“You’re starting to. Just go slow. This man on the phone mistook you for Leonard?”

“Yes. I’d just come home from work; Leonard wasn’t in yet. I said hello and this man’s voice said, ‘Mr. Purcell?’ Then he went right on talking before I could tell him I wasn’t.”

“What did he say?”

“I can quote his exact words. He said, ‘Your brother didn’t fall off the cliff that night, Mr. Purcell. He was pushed. And I know who pushed him.’ ”

“That’s all?”

“Not quite. I was shocked; I said, ‘Who is this? What do you want?’ He said, ‘Money, Mr. Purcell, that’s what I want.’ I heard Leonard’s car just then, and I was so upset I blurted out that I wasn’t Mr. Purcell, that Mr. Purcell had just come home and would take the call. He hung up without another word.”

“Did you tell Leonard all this when he came in?”

“Of course.”

“How did he take it?”

“He said the man must have been a crank. He said Kenneth’s death had been an accident, there was no question of that.” Washburn’s mouth quirked bitterly. “The same things the police said. But Leonard was as upset as I was. I knew him so well-I could always tell when he was upset. He and his brother were very close; he just hadn’t been himself since Kenneth’s death. If there was even a remote chance Kenneth’s fall wasn’t an accident, Leonard would have pursued it.”

“Did the man call again?”

“Not as far as I know. But I’m convinced he contacted Leonard later on, at his office.”

“Even though Leonard didn’t mention it to you?”

Washburn nodded emphatically.

“What makes you so sure?” I asked.

“The missing money. Two thousand dollars from the house safe.”

“Two thousand cash?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a lot of money to keep around the house.”

“I suppose so,” he said. “But the safe is hidden in the master bathroom; Leonard had it specially built. No one could find it if he didn’t know it was there.”

I had heard that one before; professional burglars fell all over themselves laughing when they heard it. But all I said was, “Why did the two of you need that much cash on hand?”

“Grocery money. Mad money. Spur-of-the-moment trips to Nevada. Emergencies. All sorts of reasons. We each put in a percentage of our income every month.”

I said, “Nevada?”

“Leonard liked to gamble. Poker, blackjack, roulette. Nothing compulsive; he only went three or four times a year. I usually went with him. And he won more than he lost, so I didn’t mind. Gambling was his only bad habit.”

“When did you find the two thousand missing?”

“The day after the… after Leonard’s death. The police asked me to make an inventory to find out if anything was missing.”

“ Was anything missing, other than the cash?”

“No. The safe hadn’t been touched; there was still five hundred dollars left in it. No one but Leonard and I had the combination. No one but Leonard could have taken the money.”

“And you think he took it to pay this mysterious caller. For the name of the person who allegedly murdered his brother.”

“Yes,” Washburn said. “He had absolutely no other reason to take that much cash out of the safe.”

“What about for gambling purposes?”

“That’s what the police think. Leonard sometimes gambled here in the city-just poker-but he never used house money unless he asked me first, and then only if it was for a Nevada trip. Besides, the most he ever risked at one sitting was two hundred dollars. He had an ironclad rule about that.”

“Did he tell you when he took house money for other reasons?”

“Usually.”

“Why not this time? Why would he buy information that way without confiding in you?”

“You’d have to have known Leonard,” Washburn said, and there was something different in his voice now: a kind of sadness seasoned with hurt and a touch of bitterness. “He was a very private man. We loved each other, and yet when it came to his family and his business, he… well, sometimes he shut me out. Particularly where his brother was concerned.”

“Why is that?”

“Kenneth didn’t like me, didn’t like anyone who wasn’t straight. He told Leonard once that he didn’t want anything to do with his faggot boyfriend, and Leonard didn’t stand up to him. It was as if, underneath, he… he was ashamed of me.” Washburn looked away, over at Eberhardt’s empty desk. He seemed very small, sitting there-and very alone. “Anyhow,” he said after a time, “that was why I wasn’t invited to the party the night Kenneth died.”

“Was Leonard invited?”

“Oh yes. And he went, even though he knew it hurt me.”

I was beginning to get a picture of what kind of man Leonard Purcell had been. And I didn’t particularly like what I saw. I watched Washburn finish what was left in his cup, put the cup down carefully on the edge of my desk. Watched him hunch a little inside his jacket. Damn Sam Crawford and his mandates about the heat.

I said, “More coffee, Mr. Washburn?”

“No, thank you. It’s a bit too strong for me.”

“I can add some water…”

“No, really, I’m fine.”

I got up and poured another half-cup for myself. When I sat down again I said, “About Kenneth. How did he feel about Leonard being gay?”

“I don’t really know. I suppose he ignored it, as if it were a temporary aberration on Leonard’s part. Leonard was married once, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“For five years. Ruth divorced him when she found out he had male lovers.” A faint smile. “I was one of them.”

“Do you know his ex-wife?”

“No, not really.”

“Was the divorce bitter or amicable?”

“Not as bitter as it might have been, I guess-Leonard didn’t talk about that much, either. She did let him have the house.” Pain moved through his expression again, like something dark and restive just beneath the surface of his features. “He really loved that house. So did I, until… well, now it’s as dead for me as he is.”

“How long had you been living there with him?”

“Two years, ever since Ruth moved out. It was a permanent relationship.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“We were going to be married one day,” he said.

I knew that gays sometimes had unofficial wedding ceremonies, without benefit of marriage licenses, presided over by ministers from the Unitarian church or some other liberal congregation. But I did not want to discuss that sort of thing with Washburn. It was a private matter, and painful for him now-and I was still old-fashioned enough to feel uncomfortable with some of the more open and iconoclastic attitudes of the homosexual community.

I said, “Let’s get back to the man on the telephone. Do you have any idea who he might be?”

“No, none.”

“Was he young, old?”

“Young-twenties or thirties, I’d say.”

“Black, white, Oriental?”

“I’m not sure. Latin, perhaps.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“A faint one. I couldn’t quite place it.”

“Anything else distinctive about his voice?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Did he sound educated?”

“Well, he used proper English. But he didn’t seem very well-spoken.”

“Any other impression of him?”

“I’m afraid that’s all.”

“If what he said to you is true he must either have been at Kenneth’s house that night and witnessed what happened, or he’s close to someone who was there and witnessed it.”

Washburn worried his lower lip for a time. Then he said, “He didn’t strike me as the type Kenneth would invite to one of his fancy parties. His friends were mostly rich people.”

“An acquaintance of one of the guests, then?”

“Kenneth’s daughter,” Washburn said musingly. “She’s the wild type.”

“Wild in what way?”

“Oh, you know, drugs. The whole scene.”

“Where does she live, do you know?”

“With some fellow on Mission Creek. She has a houseboat there. At least she did a few months ago.”

“‘What’s the fellow’s name?”

“I don’t remember Leonard mentioning it.”

“What’s her name? Purcell?”

“Yes. Melanie Purcell. Kenneth’s daughter by his first marriage.”

“Would you know if she was at the party that night?”

“I’m not sure. I think she might have been.”

“What can you tell me about the other guests?”

“Very little, I’m afraid. Alicia is the person to ask.”

“Kenneth’s widow?”

“Yes. She’s his second wife.”

“What happened to the first one?”

“They were divorced.”

“Where would I find Alicia?”

“Well, I think she’s still living at the house.”

“In Moss Beach, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Did Leonard handle his brother’s legal affairs?”

“No. He didn’t feel it was proper.”

“Who did?”

“An attorney here in the city. I don’t remember his name.”

“I can get it from the police. Did Kenneth leave a will?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Who inherited the bulk of his estate?”

“Alicia, Melanie, and Leonard.”

“How much was the estate worth?”

“I don’t know exactly. Quite a lot.”

“What was Leonard’s share?”

“I don’t know that either,” Washburn said. “Talking about it was so painful for him; I tried not to pry.”

“Do you know if the will has cleared probate yet? If the inheritance has been paid?”

“I’m sure it hasn’t. I’d know if it had been.”

“Let’s assume Kenneth was pushed off that cliff,” I said. “Who do you think did the pushing?”

He spread his hands. “I just have no idea. Someone he was involved with on one of his real estate deals, possibly.”

“Quasi-legitimate, some of those deals, according to the papers.”

“Yes. So I understand.”

“In what way?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Did Leonard know?”

“I suppose he did.”

“But he wouldn’t discuss it?”

“No. He didn’t approve, I can tell you that.”

“Did Leonard happen to say anything about his brother’s missing snuff box?”

“No, nothing.”

“Kenneth collected snuff boxes, didn’t he?”

“Snuff bottles, too,” Washburn said. “And humidors, cigarette boxes-anything rare and valuable connected with tobacco.”

I made a note on the pad in front of me; I had been making notes right along. While I was doing that Eberhardt burst in. He doesn’t just walk into a room, like most people; he barrels in as if he’s one of the vanguards in a raiding party. Washburn, looking startled, swung around on his chair. I got up, saying, “Just my partner,” and introduced them.

Eberhardt wanted to know if he was intruding; I said no, Washburn’s and my business was about finished. He nodded, muttered something about it being like an icebox in here, poured himself some coffee, and went to his desk and picked up his phone.

I said to Washburn, “So your theory is both Kenneth and Leonard were killed by the same person-Leonard so he wouldn’t expose the truth about his brother’s death.”

Washburn nodded. He seemed a little ill at ease now that someone else was in the room.

“But why didn’t Leonard expose the truth? Why contact the murderer instead of the police? Why let him or her know that the crime against Kenneth had been found out?”

“Leonard might have been trying to make him admit something incriminating, just so he could be sure. He had to’ve known the person; he must not have believed his own life was in danger.”

Plausible answers-up to a point. But it still didn’t quite add up for me. I said as much to Washburn. I also pointed out to him that Leonard’s murderer didn’t have to be the same person who had pushed Kenneth to his death- if Kenneth had been pushed. It could just as easily have been the man on the telephone.

“But what motive would he have? Leonard must have paid him the two thousand dollars; the police didn’t find it in his office and it certainly isn’t in the house.”

“Maybe he didn’t give Leonard the name once he had the payoff,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t have a name; it could have been a straight extortion ploy, no truth to it at all. And maybe he demanded another payoff and went to the house to collect it. Leonard refused, the man threatened him with a gun, something happened to make him use it…”

“Yes, I see what you mean. But I don’t really care who it was, or why; I just want him caught and put in the gas chamber.” He folded his pale, delicate hands together again. “You know, it’s funny,” he said. “I never believed in capital punishment until now. Now I want to go to San Quentin when the time comes and watch that motherfucker die. ”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say to that.

“You will work for me?” he said. “Do what you can to find him?”

I kept silent a while longer. The thing was, I felt sorry for him. He was so small and alone, sitting there, so empty; and I kept seeing him the way he’d been last Thursday night, after he had looked into the dining room and seen what was left of his lover. I couldn’t turn him down. How could I turn him down?

“If the police have no objections,” I said finally, “yes, I’ll investigate what you’ve told me. But you have to understand that if they don’t think Kenneth was murdered, or that there’s any connection between his death and Leonard’s, chances are they’re right and I won’t find out anything.”

“I understand. But they’re not right, I know they’re not.”

“Also I don’t come cheap,” I said. “I get two hundred and fifty dollars a day plus expenses.”

“That doesn’t matter. Money doesn’t matter. I have enough.”

“All right then.” I got one of the agency contracts out of the desk and filled it in and had him sign it. Then I asked, “Where can I reach you? You’re not staying at the house?”

“No. I couldn’t spend a night there, not any more. It was all I could do to make myself go back last Friday to take inventory for the police. I’m staying with a friend.” He gave me a name and an address on upper Market, on the fringe of the Castro district, and said that he would be there days as well as nights, at least until next Monday: he had taken a leave of absence from his job at Bank of America. He also gave me a check for a thousand dollars and insisted I let him know when I wanted more.

When all of that was done I went with him to the door, and shook his hand, and watched him walk away to the stairs. And I thought: It’s not just for him. It’s for Leonard, no matter what kind of man he was-and for me, too. Because I saw Leonard crawling in his own blood in that dining room; because I was there with my hand on him when he died.