Trophies And Dead Things

Twelve

By morning the fog had retreated to sea, leaving behind one of those glorious sun-washed days that make me recall just why it is I've chosen to live in San Francisco. The blue skies and temperate breezes cheered me, and I spent the hours before noon performing routine chores, plus exercising my supervisory skills by listening to Rae's exuberant and oft-repeated account of yesterday's exploits.

It seemed she'd gotten lucky her first day on the job and had delivered photographic evidence of the liquor-store clerk's thieving to the client, who in turn had contacted the police. To hear Rae tell it, her keen wits and talent had been the prime ingredients in this coup (she made no mention of sheer good fortune), and she was at any minute to be inducted into the Detectives' Hall of Fame. Since I was in a good mood and also remembered the thrill of my own first success in the business, I listened patiently and made appropriate congratulatory noises, then ended up treating her to lunch at her favorite bistro on Twenty-fourth Street. It wasn't until we got back to All Souls at one-thirty that I was able to turn my attention to the Hilderly case.

Jess Goodhue hadn't yet arrived at KSTS, and of course the TV station wouldn't give out her home phone number. When I called directory assistance for the number of Taylor's Oysters, I was told it was no longer in service. Finally I phoned Tom Grant's home office and asked Ms.Curtis to schedule an appointment so Grant could sign the document renouncing his share in the Hilderly estate. She put me on hold, and then Grant came on the line. He was booked solid for the day, but said he could see me that evening.

"What time?" I asked.

"I have a dinner with a client and then an appointment for an interview. Make it around nine, and I'll give you a drink and show you my studio."

I hesitated. The invitation held a seductive note that I didn't care for. Then I decided I was behaving too much like a Tennessee Williams heroine, seeing a potential debaucher behind every tree, and agreed to the appointment.

As I hung up the phone Ted entered the office and placed a pink message slip on my desk. Gene Carver, Hilderly's former boss at Tax Management Corporation, had called over the noon hour. When I called back, Carver was available and agreed to answer a few questions.

"I'm interested in a seminar you required Perry to attend in late May-possibly one with a motivational slant."

"Motivational?" Carver sounded amused. "I don't think so. The only seminar I recall last spring was the one on taxation problems associated with divorce. Big gathering cosponsored by the bar association and the California CPAs Foundation at the Cathedral Hill Hotel on the last weekend of the month. I went. So did Perry and two of my other accountants."

That was what had promised to change Hilderly's life, as he'd told his son Kurt? An unlikely topic. Unless… "Do you recall if a divorce attorney named Thomas Y. Grant participated?"

"Sure. Old friend of Perry's, it turned out. Ran one of the workshops."

"Grant and Perry were friends?"

"Apparently they went back a long way. At first they didn't recognize each other; then they both seemed surprised and confused. But Perry spoke with Grant at the morning break, and later I saw them having lunch together at Tommy's Joint."

"Did Perry say anything about Grant to you?"

"As a matter of fact, he did. Let me see if I can remember it right." Carver paused. "This was when the afternoon session broke. What he said was that Grant was a man who had made a great deal out of an essentially ruined life. That struck me as an odd assessment, seeing how much the man's worth. I asked Perry what he meant, but all he said was that he felt sorry for Grant, because he could see a lot of himself in him."

"And that was all he told you?"

"I didn't pursue it; the session was about to resume. And frankly, until now I'd forgotten about it."

I thanked Carver and jotted a few notes on a scratch pad after I hung up. In no way could I imagine how Hilderly could have considered Grant's life "ruined." Nor could I understand how he could have seen himself in a semi-ethical attorney whose hobby was making things out of dead animal parts. Of course, I hadn't known Hilderly and the way his mind worked; even those who had been part of his life hadn't mastered that.

After a few minutes I got up and wandered downstairs to Hank's office. I stopped in the door and asked, "By any chance did a call from D.A. Taylor's wife get routed to you instead of me?"

He shook his head. "I need to talk with her when she does call, though, so be sure to pass her along to me."

"If she calls. That damn Harley probably didn't give her the message. That means I'll have to drive all the way out there again."

"You sound out of sorts. What's wrong?"

I shrugged. "Afternoon malaise, I guess. You know what I just found out? Hilderly and Grant were old friends." I related what Gene Carver had told me.

"So Grant lied," Hank said. "He must want to cover up the association very badly to toss away a quarter of a million dollars."

"Yes-and I intend to ask him why when I take that document for his signature tonight." I paused, glancing at a stack of magazines that threatened to spill off the corner of one of Hank's filing cabinets. "One more question, and then I'll let you get back to work. That magazine that sent Hilderly to Vietnam-what was its name?"

He frowned. "New… something. Something relatively conservative, for a Movement publication. New… dammit, I hate it when something's right on the tip of my tongue like this!" He shut his eyes, concentrating fiercely. When he opened them, he said, "Ahah! New Liberty."

"And it was based here in the city?"

"Think so."

"Thanks." I hurried back to my office.

The man on the reference line at the public library had never heard of New Liberty; he put me on hold for a few minutes while he looked up information on the magazine. It had enjoyed a long life, as alternative publications go: from 1965 to 1970. While its circulation was never large, at one point it had reached ten thousand. The name of the editor in chief up to 1969 was Luke Widdows. After that there had been a succession of individuals, none of whom had lasted more than a month or two.

"Do you have any idea what Widdows is doing now?" I asked.

"I think I've seen his by-line someplace. He may be a free-lance journalist."

I hung up and called my friend J.D. Smith at the Chronicle. J.D. also said Widdows's name was familiar, and promised to check around and get back to me. I had an appointment to give a deposition in behalf of one of Larry's clients at a downtown law firm at three, so I tidied my desk and left the office. The deposition, as was typical, took far longer than it was supposed to, and by the time I got back to All Souls it was close to five. Ted sat at his desk, the calico kitten-Alice-draped around his shoulders.

"What's that doing there?" I asked.

He started to shrug, but caught himself in time; one really good shrug and the wisp of varicolored fur would have gone flying. "It's the only way I can get her to behave and stop tearing the place apart. For some reason she likes it there."

"Where's the other one?"

He pointed under the desk. I bent down and saw Ralph curled up on his feet. "It's tough being a working father," I said.

He glared at me and went back to the brief he was proofing.

There was a message from J.D. in my box, giving a Berkeley address and phone number for Luke Widdows, as well as a note from Hank saying he'd talked with Mia Taylor and settled matters about the inheritance. I frowned, annoyed to have missed her call; I would have liked to question Mrs. Taylor about her husband's past. Now I'd probably have to revisit West Marin after all.

Again Jess Goodhue hadn't called with the investigator's name. I dialed KSTS-TV, was told the anchorwoman was unavailable. The results of my final call were a bit more positive: Luke Widdows would be glad to talk with me about Hilderly, but was on his way out. Could I come to his place at nine the next morning? I agreed and took down directions.

Now what to do? I thought irritably. I had four empty hours before my appointment with Tom Grant. I didn't particularly want to go home, nor was I enthusiastic about catching up on my paperwork. Finally I went downstairs and lured Rae away from filling out her expense report, and we headed down the hill to the Remedy Lounge on Mission Street.

The Remedy has long been an All Souls hangout. Hank discovered it, I think, only hours after signing the lease on the Victorian, and over the years we've celebrated our triumphs and commiserated over our failures there. Unalterably dark and sleazy, with a frequently broken jukebox and shabby appurtenances, it would seem a good place to stay out of, but its ambiance belies mere surface appearances. At times within its four grimy walls I have the sensation that its tolerant-but not intrusively friendly- clientele and I are sailing a stormy sea on a ship, snug and protected from the raging elements. Of course, the ship is a tired old scow and the rocky shoals lie straight ahead, but the temporary sense of security is soothing nonetheless.

Rae and I took one of the rear booths, and within a minute Brian, the bartender, brought her a beer and me a glass of white wine. That was one of the advantages of taking my assistant along: so far as I know, hers is the only table Brian has ever brought a drink to in some thirty years of tending bar. Perhaps she reminds him of some long-lost sweetheart back in Ireland; perhaps he admires her because she naively assumed from the start that such treatment was merely her due as a paying customer. Whatever the reason, Rae rates with Brian-far higher than those of us who have been patronizing the Remedy for years.

She wanted to rerun the liquor-store saga-the realization that she'd have to testify in court having lent it further drama-but I cut her short and updated her on the Hilderly case. We kicked the facts around for two hours and three drinks plus beer nuts, but came to very few conclusions.

Rae asked, "Are you going to confront Grant about his friendship with Hilderly tonight?"

"It's the only way I'll pry the whole story out of him."

"According to you, the guy is weird. What if he gets violent?"

"I can handle him. But I doubt he will. He's not the type and, besides, he's got a position to protect. He's not about to harm me when there are people who know I'm with him. I plan to call All Souls when I get to his house and make sure he hears me tell whoever answers exactly where I am."

Rae considered that, then nodded thoughtfully. I could see she was placing the technique in her mental file for future use.

I said, "I meant to ask you-have you heard whether the bullet the police found at Hank and Anne-Marie's matched the ones that killed the sniping victims?"

"Yeah. Willie called Greg Marcus this afternoon. It matched."

I'd expected as much, but I supposed on some level I'd been hoping to hear the bullet didn't match. It would have simplified my investigation if the sniping had turned out to be a copycat shooting perpetrated by, say, someone who had had a diamond ring repossessed by Willie. Rae was watching me as if she expected some insightful comment, but I had none to offer.

When I didn't speak, she said, "What about Hank? Does he still think he's not in any danger?"

"That's what he says. But I'm not convinced of that-and I don't think he really is, either. How's Willie doing?"

"He's housebound and claustrophobic. They've stationed a cop outside, but he's afraid to leave after dark." She looked at her watch. "Come to think of it, I promised to be there right about now."

After she left I finished my wine in solitude and went home. The only message on my answering machine was from Jim, asking plaintively if we couldn't get together and talk things over. No, I decided, we couldn't. I then tried Jess Goodhue again, but the switchboard couldn't locate her. The microwave burned the middle of my frozen lasagna and left icy little lumps on the top. I ate it anyway. Afterward I went to the strongbox where I keep my.38 and took out the pouch I'd found among Hilderly's boxed possessions. The gun weighed heavy in my hand. I fingered the rough place where its serial number had been removed, then replaced it in the pouch, and the pouch in the strongbox, keeping out only the chain with the metal letters K andA depended from it. After studying it for a moment, I put it into the zipper compartment of my purse.

It was eight-thirty by now, time to leave for my appointment with Tom Grant. I made another quick call to KSTS-TV; this time Goodhue was resting until her eleven o'clock broadcast and couldn't be disturbed. I remembered what she'd said the other day: "Nobody, absolutely nobody, disturbs me in my dressing room." Although I could understand her need for that quiet time, it still irked me that she hadn't phoned as promised, and I fretted about that all the way to Pacific Heights.

The night was clear and unusually warm; the streets of Pacific Heights were hushed, set apart from the rest of the city by that silence that often envelops privileged neighborhoods. Outside the Gate, the foghorns bellowed-a dolorous and faintly menacing reminder that the fog had not left for good, was merely waiting in abeyance at sea. As I crossed the sidewalk from my car to Grant's house I heard other sounds: a cat fight somewhere up the hill; the breeze rustling the leaves of the eucalypti in the vast military reservation behind the homes; the wail of a siren down near Lombard Street.

Then I heard yet another noise: footsteps running and stumbling. As they came closer, they were punctuated by a harsh gasping and sobbing, and I realized the sounds were coming from Grant's property. I hurried up to the gate just as his secretary, Ms.Curtis, burst through it and let forth a wild high-pitched scream that escalated in shrillness until it set a chill skittering across my shoulder blades.

She was dressed much as she had been two days before, but the primness and stiffness were gone. Her face was gray and twisted; her eyes were glassy and jumpy. I grabbed her arm, and they focused briefly on my face, but she didn't seem to recognize me. Then she turned her ankle and the scream cut off as she pitched forward. As I caught and steadied her she said between gasps, "The police! Call the police!"

I glanced around. People were looking through their windows on the other side of the street, but-as in Hank and Anne-Marie's neighborhood-they weren't about to come outside when someone was screaming. I eased Ms.Curtis through the gate. She stiffened and shook her head. "I can't go back there!"

"Here-sit down." I guided her onto the wall of one of the raised flower beds, then went to shove the gate closed. When I turned, she was hunched over, arms wrapped around her midsection. "Tell me what happened," I said tensely.

She moaned. "Tom. He's in the studio. He… I think they've killed him."

I noted her use of the plural, but now wasn't the time to question her. "How do I get to the studio?"

"Path around the house." She motioned to the left and behind her.

"You go inside. Call nine eleven."

She remained hunched where she was.

"Can you do that?"

She nodded.

I hurried across the courtyard and followed a bricked path to the rear of the property, where a second courtyard overshadowed by another acacia tree lay between the house itself and the wall that bordered the Presidio. It was very dark back there, even though the moon silvered the bricks but in the far right-hand corner of the lot I saw a small structure faced in the same brown shingle as the house and overgrown with broad-leaved ivy. A faint light shone through its one narrow window.

I moved slowly toward it, aware of the clicking of my heels on the bricks. Around me everything seemed to have stopped moving; even the breeze had died, and the eucalyptus leaves no longer rustled. No sounds came from the small building.

The door was ajar, spilling a fine line of light onto the bricks. Warily I pushed it all the way open. The faint squeak of its hinges made me start.

Before me lay a room with a large central worktable; the wall behind it had drawers at the bottom and tools suspended from a pegboard above them. The other walls were bare, painted white. An odor filled the room: metallic, sickly sweet. The odor I've come to think of as the smell of death.

I stepped inside, moved past the cluttered worktable. Grant lay on the floor behind it. He was on his back, his left arm flung out beside him, his right raised above his head as if to ward off his attacker. Blood covered his face, hands, casual tan clothing. It had spattered over the drawers and pegboard. As I moved closer I saw his forehead was caved in, white bone showing.

I wanted to grip the worktable for support, but I knew better than to disturb the scene; Ms.Curtis had probably done a good bit of damage already. I turned away briefly, breathing shallowly through my mouth. When I felt steady enough, I went over to the body and checked to see if there was any pulse. Of course there wasn't.

Something on the floor a few feet away caught my eye as I straightened. I leaned out, staring at it. It looked to be a partially finished fetish-a heavy gridwork of metal with feathers sticking through the spaces between the rods-and it was covered with drying blood. Grant had been bludgeoned to death with one of his own hideous creations.

The phrase seemed eerily apt here in this workshop-turned-abattoir, where Grant had fashioned his sick fetishes from animal and bird corpses and where, in turn, someone had fashioned his death.

And then I remembered another phrase from the quatrain: nets to catch the wind. Grant had also fashioned such nets, fed his ambition by fanning the greed of his clients and using it against the wives and children they had once loved. And now?

Nothing, I thought as I hurried back to the house. Nothing but empty nets-a life that had produced nothing of value, that would not be long remembered beyond the last obituary.

I found Ms.Curtis sitting in one of the clients' chairs in Grant's office, staring at the telephone on the desk. "Did you call nine eleven?" I asked her.

She looked up as if surprised to see me there. "I… couldn't."

"I will." I punched out the three digits, gave the operator the necessary information. Then I sat down on the other chair.

Angela Curtis had been crying. The tears had left a tracery of pale brown mascara on her cheeks. I fished in my bag and handed her a clean tissue. "When did you find him?"

She scrubbed at her face, made a weary gesture. "Just before you arrived. I'd been to a movie on Union Street. Tom told me to go; he had someone coming, and he didn't seem to want me around the house."

When I'd spoken with him on the phone, Grant had mentioned an interview he had scheduled after his dinner appointment. Perhaps he planned to replace Angela Curtis and was talking with a job applicant; that would explain him not wanting her around. But why send her to a movie? Why not just send her home?

"Why did you come back here?" I asked.

"I live here."

How convenient for him, I thought. A secretary who lived in; no wife to potentially demand her share of the community property. And you could be sure he'd made no promises or statements that would give rise to a palimony suit.

She sensed my thoughts, because she said, "It wasn't like that. It was just… easier if I lived on the premises." Then she scrubbed at her face some more, balled up the tissue, and tossed it in the wastebasket. "Oh, God, who do I think I can fool? Of course it was like that. What idiot would believe otherwise?"

I said, "Ms.Curtis, what happened when you came home?"

"I went out to the studio, and Tom was…" She shook her head, swallowed.

"Earlier you said 'they' killed Tom. Who did you mean?"

She shook her head, distracted. "I said that?"

"Yes. Do you have reason to believe it was more than one person? Suspect someone?"

"I guess I meant his clients. They took and took, and then they weren't satisfied."

"Did Tom ever mention an old friend named Perry Hilderly to you?"

She shook her head.

"There was a seminar Tom participated in at the Cathedral Hill Hotel the last weekend in May. Are you sure Hilderly's name didn't come up in connection with that?"

"I'm positive."

"And you don't suspect any one of his clients in particular?"

"I suspect all of them. Any of them. I'm not blind to what Tom was, Ms. McCone. The reason his clients weren't satisfied was that he'd conditioned them to selfishness and cruelty. Simple stimulus-response. Someone tries to take something from you-even something that's rightfully theirs-and you lash out, take it back, hurt them in the process. Afterward they would turn on Tom; often they didn't even want to pay his fee." She paused, then said as fresh tears welled in her eyes, "I knew exactly what he was, but that didn't stop me from loving him."