Trophies And Dead Things

One

On summer mornings San Francisco is often shrouded by a heavy fog. It billows through the Golden Gate and moves insidiously about the city, transforming familiar places and ordinary objects into things of beauty, mystery, or-in certain cases-evil. It hangs thick outside windows, slips under doors, and permeates the consciousness of those on the raw edge of waking. An untroubled rest will then degenerate into tossing and turning; pleasant dreams grow nightmarish. When the fog's victims open their eyes, they are already aware of a curious deadening of spirit, even before they face the gray day.

I was one of those victims on a Saturday morning in July. Long before my alarm was due to go off at the unholy hour of seven I woke and lay contemplating the shadows that gathered in the corners of my bedroom. Finally I reached for the rod that controlled the mini-blinds on the window above my head and turned it. The light that entered was murky; I sat up, saw mist decorating the branches of my backyard pine trees like angel's hair.

I sighed, turned off the alarm before it could ring, and,flopped back against the pillows. The flat, dull feeling I'd awakened with deepened. There had been a dream… of what? I couldn't remember, but its aura persisted-distinctive, depressing.

I focused on the day ahead, but its prospects weren't too cheerful, either. Hank Zahn, senior partner at All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I am staff investigator, had asked a favor: that I help him clear out the flat of a client who had been killed in one of a recent rash of random street shootings. Although it was not the way I cared to spend my Saturday, I'd agreed because I sensed that Hank-one of my oldest and closest friends-needed my presence. And there was one bright spot: he'd bribed me with the promise of lunch; that plus Hank's good company was a winning combination.

Lord knew I could use some good company. This morning's low-grade depression might be mostly fog-induced, but the last month had been lonely and bleak, the five before it not much better. I had to find some way out of these emotional doldrums- The doorbell rang.

Uneasiness stole over me, the way it does when doorbells or phones ring at times when they're typically not supposed to. I got up, grabbed my robe, belted it securely as I went down the hall. When I got to the door, I peered through its peephole.

Jim Addison, the man I'd been seeing up until a month ago, stood on the steps-and he was drunk. At a little after seven in the morning, he was obviously drunk.

I opened the door and stared. Jim listed against the porch railing, a foxy little gleam in his blue eyes. His sandy hair was tousled, his clothing was rumpled, and he reeked of cigarette smoke.

He said, "All-night jam session." Jim was a jazz pianist who played on weekends with a group at a small club near the beach. "Can I come in?"

I hesitated, wondering how quickly and easily I could get rid of him, then decided humoring him was the best approach. (Get rid of him… humor him… What had once been a pleasant relationship had come down to that.)

"For a few minutes." I let him in and led him down the hall to the kitchen, where I went directly to the coffee-maker and filled it with water. He went directly to the refrigerator and looked inside.

"Got any wine?"

"There's half a bottle of Riesling on the shelf in the door." While I whirled beans in the coffee grinder with one hand, I reached into the cupboard with the other and passed him a glass. I'd become used to Jim winding down his day while I was just beginning mine, although he didn't often unwind to such excess.

When I got the coffee going and turned, I saw he was just standing there, holding the empty wineglass and frowning. "You hate me, don't you?" he said.

I sighed. "Of course not." It was the same question he'd asked when I'd told him I didn't want to see him anymore- and in each of his numerous and persistent phone calls since then. My answer was true, although I'd long ago wearied of reassuring him. Jim was a nice man with a good sense of humor, a talented and dedicated musician, and I liked him a great deal. In fact, it was liking him so much that had made me decide to end the relationship. It's unkind to use someone you care for to get over someone else whom you think you love.

He regarded me for a moment and then his lips twisted disgustedly. "Sensible and rational as ever, aren't you?"

"What's that supposed to-"

"You're always right, you always know what's best for me, for you, for the whole fucking world!"

"That's not true." If I were so sensible and rational, would I allow myself to go on missing a man whom I hadn't heard from for over six months? Would I have allowed myself to fall in love with that particular man in the first place?

Jim slammed the wineglass down on the counter so hard that it shattered. My gaze jumped to the gleaming shards and then to his face, mottled with rage. It was the first time I'd ever seen him angry.

"What do I have to say to get through to you?" he demanded.

"We've said it all before."

"No, I don't think so. Not yet, we haven't!" Abruptly he turned and went down the hall; the front door opened and slammed behind him.

"Great," I said. "Just great. What else can go wrong today?"

I expelled a long breath and leaned back against the counter; behind me the coffeemaker wheezed and burbled. For a moment I considered whether Jim-this new angry Jim whom I didn't know-had a potential for violence. Well, I decided, we all did, didn't we? I'd have to wait and see what he did next. And on that less than encouraging note, I went to turn on the shower.

While I was washing my hair, the dream I'd had came back to me. I'd been driving to meet Hank at his client's flat in the Inner Richmond district, but after I crested Buena Vista Heights and descended into the Haight-Ashbury, I found that Stanyan, the northbound street on the edge of Golden Gate Park, had disappeared. In my confusion I made a series of turns that led me deep into unfamiliar territory, then suddenly I arrived at the top of the hill again. Over and over I'd driven down into the Haight. Over and over I'd found no trace of Stanyan Street.

Such frustration dreams-repeatedly dialing a phone and hitting the wrong buttons, missing a plane because I couldn't get packed in time-were nothing new to me. I'd recently read a paperback on the subject and learned that they're an indication that the dreamer is of two minds about reaching the destination, completing the call, or making the plane trip. But in this case, despite the depressing nature of the task ahead, I couldn't understand why I should feel such strong ambivalence-or why the dream had left such an unpleasant, lingering aura.

Superstitiously I crossed my shampoo-slick fingers against the possibility of the dream being a bad omen.

By nine o'clock I'd had three cups of coffee and done the Chronicle crossword, and my spirits had risen somewhat. By nine-thirty, when I arrived in the Inner Richmond (Stanyan Street still being there after all), I felt reasonably cheerful.

The Richmond is a solidly middle-class district on the northwest side of Golden Gate Park, consisting mainly of single-family homes and multi-flat buildings set close together on small lots. Once it was heavily populated by members of the city's Russian and Irish communities, but in the past couple of decades it has become the neighborhood of choice for upwardly mobile Asians. While the Catholic churches and Irish pubs and the Russian Orthodox cathedral on Geary Boulevard remain, everywhere there are signs of the new residents.

As I drove along Clement Street, the district's busy shopping area, I noted eight Asian restaurants within two blocks: one Thai, one Japanese, one Burmese, two Vietnamese, and three different types of Chinese. Produce stands with outdoor bins full of bok choy and daikon radish, groceries with smoked ducks and barbecued pork ribs hanging in their windows, banks and insurance agencies with signs in both English and various Asian characters- all these stood side by side with such longtime institutions as Green Apple Books, Churchill's Pub, Woolworth's, and Busvan Bargain Furniture. Eight out of ten faces that I spotted were Asian-reflecting the same ethnic mix as the restaurants, and ranging from stooped old people pulling shopping carts to young couples emerging from Japanese-model sports cars. Clement Street, I thought, was the perfect embodiment of the changing cultural patterns of San Francisco.

Unfortunately, it is also one of the worst examples of the city's congested parking and traffic. The area was built up at a time when no one envisioned today's large population of both people and cars, and consequently there are too few parking lots and garages. Even at that relatively early hour, all the metered spaces were taken and trucks double-parked while making deliveries. Cars moved slowly, their drivers looking for vacancies at the curbs; other irate drivers made U-turns, slid through stop signs, and endangered pedestrians in the crosswalks. I waited behind an exhaust-belching Muni bus as it unloaded passengers, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel of my MG and giving mental thanks to Hank for remembering to tell me it was okay to park in the driveway of the house on Third Avenue- should I ever reach it.

After five more minutes of creeping along Clement, I rounded the corner onto Third and found the address Hank had given me: one of those two-flat buildings with a garage and illegal in-law apartment on the ground floor. Its facade was bastardized Victorian, mint green with mauve and tangerine trim-a combination that would cause even a person of minimal taste to cringe. Hank's Honda stood in the driveway, blocking the sidewalk. I looked around, saw that most of the residents had left their cars in a similar fashion, except for one enterprising soul who had pulled up parallel to the curb on the sidewalk itself. So much for parking regulations, I thought as I pulled in beside the Honda.

As soon as Hank came to the door of the downstairs flat, I was glad I'd agreed to help him. There were lines of strain around his mouth, and when he took his horn-rimmed glasses off to polish their thick lenses on the tail of his maroon corduroy work shirt, I saw that his eyes were clouded. Hank is a man who cares deeply for his clients-too deeply, perhaps, to maintain the distance needed when dealing with their problems. It's not that it renders him ineffectual; it just causes him more pain than he deserves.

I smiled reassuringly at him and stepped inside. The flat was chilly; Hank probably didn't want to waste the estate's money by turning up the heat. A narrow hallway ran the length of the building; at its end was a door through which I could see a kitchen table and refrigerator. To my left was a small living room with a bay window overlooking the street. I went in there and started to take off my suede jacket. Then I stopped; I might soil it while hefting cartons and furniture, but I'd be too cold without it.

Hank sensed my predicament. "I've got coffee on," he said, "and you can wear one of Perry's sweaters."

"Thanks." I followed him down the hall and into a bedroom that was even smaller than the living room. He rummaged through a pile of clothing that lay on the double bed, then tossed me a heavy green cardigan with a hole in one elbow and a raveled right cuff. When I put it on, it came down to my knees; I rolled up the sleeves to wrist length. Perry Hilderly, the deceased client, had been a big man.

Hank was already on his way to the kitchen. By the time I got there he'd poured coffee and was holding out a mug. I took it, then peered through a door to the left. It led to a dining room with a fireplace and built-in leaded-glass cabinets-standard for this type and vintage of flat. The room contained no furniture, nothing but cardboard boxes with the name BEKINS stenciled on them.

I looked at Hank, eyebrows raised inquiringly.

"It's the stuff Perry moved here years ago, after his divorce," he said. "He wasn't much of a homebody. Accountants never are, I guess."

It was one of those blanket statements Hank sometimes makes-bald assumptions with little or no basis in fact. They always startle me, considering the variety of individuals with full complements of quirks that he's seen wander through the door of All Souls year after year. Such typecasting of his fellow man is a product of his early environment- his mother is quite adamant in her pronouncements about others-and since he never allows it to cloud his judgment, I can put up with it without comment.

I went over to the refrigerator to look at a color snapshot that was held up there by a magnet. It showed a tall, lanky man with curly blond hair and granny glasses; he wore a Giants sweatshirt and was flanked by two similarly attired blond boys who were only tall enough to reach to his waist. "This is Hilderly, right?"

"Uh-huh. It's an old photo; his boys are in their teens now."

I examined it more closely. "He doesn't look all that different from the way he did in the nineteen sixty-five picture that they ran in the Chron the morning after he was shot. Of course, his hair was long and wild back then."

Perry Hilderly had been one of the founders of the Free Speech Movement at U.C. Berkeley in the 1960s. Although I'd still been in high school then, I'd taken a great interest in the changing mood on the campuses-probably because I was the white sheep in a family of rebels and envied both my siblings' and the students' ability to blatantly challenge authority. My impressions of Hilderly were somewhat vague, but I recalled television coverage of the protests in which he could be seen clowning around on the periphery.

Hank said, "Do you remember him?"

"Some."

"I'm surprised."

I sat down at the kitchen table with him. "Why?"

"Well, you were just a baby then."

I smiled. Hank is only six years older than I, but he has always taken a paternalistic stance toward me. Partly this is because when we met at Berkeley-years after Hilderly had passed from that scene-he was a world-weary law student with the horrors of Vietnam behind him, while I was an undergrad whose toughest battles had been fought in the trenches of the department store where I'd worked in security before deciding to go to college. Over the years the balance of world-weariness has shifted more to my side, but Hank persists in the notion that he must watch out for and guide me. I know, although we've never discussed it, that this persistence is fueled by the fact that our friendship has never been endangered by romantic entanglement. Hank's paternalism is designed to preserve the status quo.

"Still, I remember him," I said, "even if he never received as much media attention as Mario Savio."

"Well, few people had Mario's charisma. Perry's comedic style was a bit like Abbie Hoffman's, but not nearly as outrageous. And there were a lot of lesser luminaries hogging the limelight." Hank's smile was reminiscently wry.

I knew what he was thinking; as a friend of mine once put it, not many of the sixties people have "held up." Few went on to achieve the heights that those on the sidelines expected of them. But for a time such visionaries as Mario Savio had captured the imagination of a generation. Mario, who one fall day in 1964 respectfully removed his shoes before climbing atop a police car that had been entrapped by some three thousand students protesting the arrest of a civil-rights worker on the Cal campus. Mario, who seized a microphone and involved others in the crowd in a thirty-hour spontaneous public dialog that forever changed the university, the youth of America, the nation itself. No, Perry Hilderly hadn't held a safety match to Mario Savio's incandescence, but he had brought humor to a basically humorless movement, had defused potentially dangerous situations with his wit.

As I recalled, in the late sixties Hilderly had vanished from the Berkeley scene. By the time I arrived there, most of his compatriots had disappeared, too. I'd once listened to a news analyst on KPFA discussing how many of the former leaders of the FSM had become frustrated by their lack of tangible progress and gone underground with the Weathermen. Now it seemed that Hilderly, at least, had become an accountant-and died many years later in a senseless street shooting on Geary Boulevard, two blocks from his apartment.

I said to Hank, "You were still an undergrad at Stanford in the sixties. How come you knew Hilderly? Or did that come later?"

"Later. I met him in 'Nam in nineteen seventy. Perry'd been thrown out of Cal and gone to work for a leftist magazine. He went to 'Nam to report on the war for them, but they folded shortly after he got there. When I met him, he was living with a family near Cam Ranh Bay. He had a baby boy by one of the daughters. He was lonely for American company, so he hung out at a bar with some of us liberals from the base, talking about the war and what was going down back home. Then his woman and son were killed in the mortar shelling. Right after that, Perry went back to California."

"And then?"

Hank shrugged. "He enrolled in S.F. State and got his degree in accounting. Married again, had two more boys. Was divorced about ten years ago, lived alone in this flat, and worked at Geary and Twenty-second, for one of those tax firms that's a cut above H &R Block."

"How'd you come to be his attorney?"

"I ran into him at Churchill's Pub one night about five years ago. Recognized him right off-as you pointed out, he hadn't changed much except for having short hair. After that he came to see me about a minor legal problem, and we started to meet fairly frequently, always at Churchill's."

"Were you close friends?"

"Not really. Why?"

"I just wondered about him becoming an accountant. And living like this." I gestured around the plain, conventional-looking kitchen. "It doesn't fit with his past."

"No, it doesn't. But the few times I tried to ask him about it, he just changed the subject."

"What did you usually talk about?"

"My work. All Souls. He was interested in the workings of a low-cost legal services plan. Sports; he was a Giants fan. And old movies-he watched a lot of them, mostly from the thirties and forties. But I had the feeling that anything more personal was off limits."

"What do you suppose happened to make him that way?"

"I don't know, but I sensed it in 'Nam, too. He wasn't quite as closed off then, but if anybody got on the subject of the old days at Berkeley, Perry all of a sudden remembered someplace else he had to be." Hank looked at his watch. "But enough-we'd better get busy. I've only got today free to work on clearing this place out, and the landlady wants to start showing it on Monday."

I drained my coffee mug and stood. "What do you want me to do?"

"You could box up the books and videotapes and other stuff in the living room. The Salvation Army'll pick up everything on Monday."

"You mentioned Hilderly's sons-won't they want any of it?"

"Their mother said no. Apparently he wasn't close to the boys. She remarried a long time ago, and they live over in Blackhawk-that fancy development near Danville. But the kids are provided for in the will; Perry inherited a substantial amount from his mother a few years after the divorce. It's to be divided equally between the boys."

"I see. Well, I'd better get to it." I started for the door.

"Shar," Hank said.

I turned.

"Thanks for helping. This is easily the worst part about being executor of an estate."

"No problem."

He added, "Even though Perry and I weren't all that close, his death has really upset me. You know?"

I nodded. "Probably because of the way he died. These snipings. If they hadn't been spread out over more than three months, the city would be in a panic right now-like when the Zebra killings were going on."

"You're probably right. I find myself getting paranoid. I worked late a couple of nights last week, and when I left I could have sworn there was someone lurking around outside All Souls."

"Nerves."

"Typical urban ailment."

I went down the hall to the front room and dragged a carton over to the brick-and-board bookcase opposite the bay window. Perry Hilderly's books were mainly texts on accounting, tax law, math, statistics, and investing. The number of them and their presence didn't surprise me, but what did was the absence of any lighter reading material such as magazines, novels, or nonfiction that didn't relate to his profession. Finally on the bottom shelf I found a few volumes on film: guides to serials, crime movies, and film noir, plus a few books about old TV series such as "Perry Mason." I boxed them all, then turned to the videotapes.

There were hundreds of them, stacked against the wall behind the TV: Bogart, Tracy and Hepburn, BarbaraStanwyck, William Powell, Gary Grant; a full run of Charlie Chans and Mr. Motos and the Topper series; westerns, comedies, drama. Not one of them had been produced later than the mid-fifties. It made me wonder if Hilderly hadn't been trying to pretend the sixties and seventies and eighties had never happened.

After I boxed the tapes, I looked around for what Hank had called "the other stuff." There wasn't much of it. A water-stained lobby card for a Bogart movie called All Through the Night, framed but with badly cracked glass. A carved wooden box, the kind you find at Cost Plus, containing two sets of worn playing cards. A set of Capiz-shell coasters. A silver-plated table lighter, nonfunctional. A brass bowl, also Cost Plus quality, containing nothing but a paper clip and some dust. I put the smaller items into a carton and left it and the lobby card on the cracked vinyl recliner that faced the TV. Then I unplugged the TV, unhooked the VCR, and shoved the stand over by the ugly plaid couch. The act held a depressing finality.

When I went down the hall, I found Hank in the bedroom. He was folding the clothing that lay on the bed and stuffing it into a big plastic trash bag, where it immediately became unfolded and jumbled. One look at his woebegone face made me say, "Let me do that while you get started on the kitchen."

He nodded, looking grateful, and gently set down the sweater he held.

I'd never had to dispose of a dead friend's possessions, but I guessed the clothing must be the most difficult task of all. Even though I hadn't known Hilderly personally, I also found myself smoothing and folding each item before placing it in the bag; somehow it seemed a negation of the person to toss his garments in there like so many rags.

As I worked I could hear Hank clinking dishes in the kitchen, but after a while the sounds stopped, and I feared he'd become discouraged again. I finished with the clothing, stripped the bed, checked to make sure there was nothing in the bureau or nightstand drawers. Then I went back there.

Hank was sitting at the table, a sheaf of papers spread before him. When I came in, he looked up at me, his face a study in shock and bewilderment.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"These were in a plastic bag in the freezer." He gestured at the papers. "Perry told me to look for his important documents there-said it was a good fireproof place, and cheaper than a safe-deposit box."

I looked closer at what lay before him. There were stock certificates, an automobile pink slip, a number of savings-account passbooks, and some other papers. "So?"

"This," he said, fingering a document with a pale blue cover sheet, "is a copy of the will I drew up for him four years ago. I had the original in the All Souls safe, and I've already entered it into probate. But this"-he held up a page covered in cramped handwriting-"is a second will, superseding the first one."

"Is it legal?"

"Yes. It's a holograph, and he did it properly. It's dated three weeks ago."

"And?"

"It's totally different from the first. Cuts out his kids entirely and makes no explanation of why. He leaves his money to be divided equally among four people-and damned if I know who they are, or what they were to him."