Trophies And Dead Things

Two

Hank handed me the sheet of paper, and I scanned it quickly. From the legal terminology, I gathered that Hilderly had copied it from his original will, changing only the names under the section headed "Specific Bequests." The conditions for the executor and disposal of personal effects were as Hank had described them, but instead of Hilderly's sons, four individuals were to share equally in "all cash, securities, and other financial assets": Jess Goodhue, Thomas Y. Grant, Libby Heikkinen, and David Arlen Taylor. Hilderly did not specify their relationship to him, but he did state that he was making no provision for his former wife and children. The will didn't look as official as the typed copy from All Souls, but if Hank said it was legal, it had to be.

My fingers touched something attached to the other side of the sheet. I turned it over, found one of those yellow stick-on memos. On it Hilderly had written, "Hank: You'll know how to contact Goodhue and Grant, but you'll have to trace Heikkinen and Taylor. Sorry for the inconvenience." I peeled the memo off and handed it to Hank.

He read it and grimaced in annoyance. "Sure, Perry. I've never heard of any of these people!"

"You must know who Jess Goodhue is."

"Why the hell would I?"

"She's a co-anchor on the KSTS evening news."

"You forgot-I don't watch broadcast news."

"Oh, right." For as long as I've known him, Hank has been a news snob; he prefers his information written-in depth, and in quantity. Every day he reads at least five papers: the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, theNew York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. Every week he pores over the newsmagazines, regardless of their political orientation, and when he runs out of those he's likely to be found with his nose stuck in Business Week, Sports Illustrated, or a legal journal. But one place he is never found is in front of the TV at six or eleven in the evening.

"Well," I said, "that's who Jess Goodhue is."

"Tell me more about her."

"She's one of these up-and-coming media stars. Young, in her early to mid twenties. I'm willing to bet that by the time she's thirty she'll be anchoring for one of the networks. You know the type: good-looking, poised, superprofessional."

"I can't imagine Perry even knowing someone like that."

"But he must have. Are you sure you don't know this Thomas Y. Grant? According to Hilderly's note, he assumed you do."

Hank thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Son of a bitch, I bet it is," he said softly.

"Who?"

"Another local attorney." His lip curled slightly, but he didn't elaborate.

I spotted a directory lying on the counter beneath the wall phone. "Heikkinen's not a very common name." I set the will down and went to look under the H's. "No listing," I said after a few seconds, "but that's not surprising. Just because the first two are local doesn't mean the others have to be. Besides, she might have married and changed her name." I flipped to the Ts. There was more than a page of Taylors, including two with just the initial D and two Davids with no middle initial. "No David Arlen Taylor, either."

"That could be a tough one."

"Not really-the middle name's distinctive." I moved back toward the table. "I suppose this one's going to end up on my desk."

"Unless you want to turn it over to Rae." Rae Kelleher was my rapidly-becoming-indispensable assistant.

"No, I've kind of loaded her down lately. Maybe I'll have her do some of the preliminary work, but I'll handle the rest personally." I didn't want to tell Hank that Rae had become so good at her job I really hadn't had much to do recently. It had taken far too many years for the All Souls partners to give me the go-ahead to hire an assistant, and I wasn't about to sow any seeds of doubt as to the wisdom of that action. I also didn't want to admit that nowadays I had a lot of empty hours that I'd prefer to fill with work, for fear that such a confession would provoke a solicitous-and unwelcome- inquiry about my private life.

"Well, handle it however you want. In the meantime I'll have to stop probate of the other will. And inform Perry's ex-wife that the kids aren't going to inherit." Hank took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "There are times when I hate my work, and this is one of them." Then he stood abruptly, replacing the glasses. "Come on, let's get out of here for a while, have some lunch, clear the cobwebs."

I trailed him to the front door, shrugging off Hilderly's big sweater and grabbing my jacket and bag. On the sidewalk I lengthened my stride to match Hank's. He walked with his head bent, hands shoved in his pockets, obviously preoccupied. I steered him toward Clement. Earlier I'd noticed a dim sum place-the Fook Restaurant, of all things-and now the idea of steamed dumplings and pork buns appealed to me.

As we turned onto Clement, I realized that the fog had lifted, and observed a phenomenon that has always interested me: the line of demarcation between blue and gray sky stopped in the middle of Arguello Boulevard, bisecting the city in a north-south line. To the west, in the largely bland residential avenues that stretch toward the sea, the day would remain overcast; to the east, in such diverse areas as North Beach, downtown, Noe Valley, Hunters Point, and my own little neighborhood near the Glen Park district, the weather would turn sunny. It is a peculiarly San Francisco phenomenon, and one that outsiders have difficulty grasping. As a New York friend once told me, "There's something very odd about a city where people move across town just to get better weather."

Hank seemed oblivious to where we were going, so I steered him into the restaurant. It was noisy and crowded, but we were quickly shown to a table against one of the walls. He blinked and looked around like a rudely awakened sleepwalker as I ordered jasmine tea. The nearby tables- round ones with lazy Susans in their centers-were mainly occupied by Asian families; restaurant employees moved slowly among them, pushing stainless-steel carts loaded with delicacies and hawking their wares in Chinese. When the first cart arrived at our table, I pointed to plates of pork buns and barbecued spareribs. Hank recovered from his preoccupation and gave the nod to shrimp in fluted rice wrappers.

As I picked up my chopsticks I said, "Is Hilderly's ex-wife going to be upset that the kids won't inherit?"

"Hard to say."

"How much is the estate worth?"

"Quite a bit. Perry inherited roughly a quarter of a million dollars some seven, eight years ago. From time to time he'd mention investments to me-mostly conservative stuff like municipal bonds, T-bills, blue chips. But every now and then he'd take a flier on one of the glamour stocks like Genentech. I'd estimate that he was worth at least a million."

"He didn't live like a millionaire."

"Perry wasn't into money. The investing was a game to him, matching his wits against the market. If he made a profit, that was fine, because it would mean there was more to leave to his boys. But he didn't care about it for himself, and he spent very little."

"Well, what about those four people named in the new will? What were they to him, that he'd cut out his own kids and leave them that much money?"

"Damned if I know. He never so much as mentioned a one of them to me. Two of them, he himself didn't know how to contact."

"You say Thomas Grant is an attorney?"

Hank nodded, biting into one of the shrimp dumplings. After he swallowed he said, "A real sleazebag. Around fifty, I'd say. He turned up here in the mid-seventies, went into divorce work-for men only, taking a very aggressive 'to hell with the wife and kids' stance. Advises his clients on how to get around the community-property laws, and not always in legitimate ways."

"Sounds like a sweetheart."

"He doesn't have too many scruples, or much humanity. Grant latched on to an idea whose time-unfortunately- had come, due to the backlash against the women's movement. Now he's got branch offices-franchises is actually a better description-throughout the Bay Area, and is looking to expand further."

"The fast-food chain of divorce lawyers."

"Right."

I looked over at a cart that had paused by our table. There was a plate of oddly shaped objects coated in a golden crust. I pointed at it with my chopsticks. "What're those?"

The waitress said, "Duck feet."

"Duck… feet?"

She nodded, smiling at my reaction.

"How about some of that chicken? And a plate of pearl balls?"

She set the plates down, marked our check, and departed.

Hank was grinning. "I thought, as you're fond of proclaiming, that you have no food prejudices."

"I don't."

"Then why not try the duck feet?"

"Well, it's just that… they probably don't have much meat on them."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, it's true-you saw them. And I don't have any prejudices; I'll eat what's set before me. People who are picky or won't try new things drive me crazy."

"That's why you wouldn't eat Larry's tofu in chili sauce last week." Larry Koslowski, an All Souls partner, is a health-food nut.

"I couldn't help that. It looked like… I don't think we should discuss it while we're eating. Anyway, back to Hilderly. He never talked to you about wanting to change his will?"

"No."

"I wonder why he made a holograph? Why not ask you to draw up the new will?"

"I suspect because he was afraid I'd try to talk him out of it. Or insist on knowing what those people were to him and why he wanted to make them his heirs."

"Makes sense."

We ate in silence for a few minutes. A dessert cart went past, and I spied the little yellow custard pies I'm fond of. I'd eaten too much to even entertain the thought of having one now, but I'd noticed a take-out counter off the restaurant's lobby; I'd stop there and buy a few of the pies for later.

Hank was looking preoccupied again, fiddling with his chopsticks.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Just brooding. I keep thinking how unlike Perry this is. He wasn't close to those kids, but he loved them and always carried out his responsibilities."

"Then he must have had a strong reason for disinheriting them. Maybe when we locate the beneficiaries they can explain it."

"It isn't really any of our business," Hank said. "As Perry's executor, I'm bound to carry out his wishes, not to snoop into something he clearly didn't care to explain to me."

"No, it's not our business, but I wonder…"

"Wonder what?"

I pushed my plate away toward the others that littered the table, then took my teacup in both hands and stared down into it, trying to put the feeling of wrongness that I was experiencing into words. "When someone makes a major change in his will and conceals it from his attorney, isn't there a possibility of undue influence or duress?"

"A possibility, yes."

"And when the person dies violently, as Perry did-"

"Shar," Hank said patiently, "you've read the papers. His killing was a random shooting. The bullet matched those found in the bodies of the sniper's other victims, all of whom were unrelated."

That was true. Still… "Hank, does any of this feel right to you?"

"… No."

"Then let's see if we can't find an explanation for Perry's actions."

There was no way I could start a skip trace on either Heikkinen or Taylor on a Saturday. When we returned to Hilderly's flat and I checked the phone directory, I found that neither Grant's nor Goodhue's home number was listed. I called Grant's law office and reached the answering service; the operator at KSTS-TV told me Goodhue was off until Monday. In the end I decided to go through the boxes in Hilderly's dining room, which Hank said had been sitting untouched since he'd moved to the flat nearly ten years before; they might contain something that would explain his connection to his four heirs.

The boxes held fairly commonplace items: household goods such as a fondue pot and yogurt maker that Hilderly had apparently had no use for; high-school yearbooks from a town I'd never heard of; photograph albums with pictures of his boys and a plump brown-haired woman, as well as of a younger Hilderly and a couple I took to be his parents; 45-rpm records that had been hits in the fifties; a collection of baseball cards that by now would be quite valuable; a catcher's mitt; a set of Hardy Boys mysteries; a high-school diploma. Like the flat itself, the boxes contained no memento of his rebellious college days; it was as if he had never attended Cal or participated in the Free Speech Movement. There were no journals, personal letters, or address books that might contain telling information.

I was about to give up when, at the bottom of the last carton, under a folded athletic jacket that showed Hilderly had lettered in high-school baseball, I found a heavy leather drawstring pouch. The object inside had the distinctive shape of a gun.

I lifted the pouch from the carton and loosened its drawstrings. Inside, my fingers touched metal. When I took the gun out, I saw it was a.38 Special of German manufacture, with a two-inch barrel-a reasonably powerful weapon that is easy to conceal on one's person. I examined it more closely and found that someone had attempted to remove the serial number, probably with acid. The number was indecipherable, but a forensics laboratory would be able to bring it out with chemicals.

There was something else in the pouch, something lighter. I reached for it, expecting ammunition. It was a pendant of sorts-a gray pot-metal chain with two small letters attached to it, a K and an A. A curving edge encased the A,but the K was jagged, as if the fragment had been broken off a larger object. A clip-like piece of metal protruded from the back of it.

A piece of junk that ended up in the pouch by mistake? I wondered. Or something that mattered enough to Hilderly that he took the trouble to separate it from his other mementos?

I got up from the floor and carried the gun and pendant into the kitchen, where Hank was emptying a cupboard. "I found a couple of odd things," I said, "but I can't even tell what one of them is."

He turned, saw the gun, and frowned. "Is that Perry's?"

"Must be. It was in one of the boxes in the dining room. Someone's removed the serial number from it."

"That's odd."

"It could have been done by someone who had possession of it previously, and Perry bought the gun illegally-on the street, for instance. Or he could have done it himself because he-or someone close to him-was the registered owner, and he didn't want that fact to come out."

Hank looked down at a blue pottery bowl he held, then set it carefully on the counter, as if he were afraid he'd drop it. "And if the latter is the case, what it implies is that he used it or intended to use it for some illegal purpose."

I nodded.

"Jesus. I came here this morning with one conception of Perry, and I'll be going away with a completely different one."

"Don't jump to conclusions," I warned. "There are other possibilities. He could have taken this off someone and put it away for safekeeping. He could have found it. You don't know."

"I don't know what I know anymore." He glanced at the pendant. "What's that on the chain?"

"A pair of letters." I handed it to him.

He examined it, fingering the rough edges as I had. "Every weekend hippie had a chain like this, but it usually had a peace symbol attached."

I smiled and took it from his outstretched hand. "I even had one. We weren't allowed to wear them to school, but on weekends we'd dress up in our bell-bottoms and tie-dye and love beads. There was this store in Laguna Beach that sold beads-fantastic hand-painted ones, all colors and sizes and shapes. We'd drive all the way up there from San Diego to buy them." I still had some of the prettier ones, unstrung how, in my jewelry box.

"You were a regular little hippie child, weren't you?" Hank said. "I never would have guessed. When I met you at Berkeley, you struck me as such a… well, cheerleader."

"I was. Captain of the high-school squad my senior year. The hippie stuff was strictly masquerade; it made us feel with-it and wicked. I hardly ever smoked dope until I got to Cal, and I only attended one feeble peace march. Then, when I was in college, the energy had kind of gone out of the Movement, and besides, I was too busy studying and working to have the time." I'd put myself through the university, working nights and weekends as a security guard, poring over my textbooks during the long, fallow hours.

Hank nodded, his gaze far away, seeing-what? The young man and woman we'd been? The idealists with all of life ahead of us? And was he comparing those people to the ones we'd become: in his case, the disillusioned but ever-hopeful dreamer; in mine, the realist whose cynicism was thus far untainted by bitterness?

I said, "Can I keep the gun and this… whatever it is?"

He roused himself from his reverie. "Sure. I doubt the Salvation Army would want the whatsis, and we'd better hang on to the gun for a while, until…"He let his words trail off, unsure what that eventuality might be.

"I'll put it in the strongbox where I keep my own gun. It'll be safe there. By the way, before they pick up the furniture and boxes, you ought to look through the ones I've set aside in the dining room. There's a lot of personal stuff, plus a fairly valuable baseball-card collection. It would be nice if Hilderly's kids had the cards, plus other things to remember their father by."

"You're right. I'll see that they get them."

I helped Hank clear the remaining cupboards, then offered to drop the keys at the landlady's, since he'd mentioned she lived in my neighborhood. He said he'd take care of it, then added, "I meant to tell you, I'm cooking chili at my flat Monday night, in honor of Anne-Marie's birthday. Jack and Ted'll be there, and Rae and Willie. I'd like you to come, too."

"Rae and Willie-that's getting to be a pretty steady thing, isn't it?"

"Appears that way. Do you disapprove?"

Since she'd started seeing Willie Whelan some months before, I'd harbored certain reservations about my assistant's new relationship, mainly because I know Willie's myriad faults altogether too well. He is a friend of Hank's from his Vietnam days, and a former fence who-as he puts it-has "gone legit." What started as a small discount jewelry store on Market Street had turned into a gold mine for him, with branches all over the Bay Area, and he takes great pride in the fact that he-like his arch-competitor at the well-known Diamond Center-performs his own television commercials. On late-night TV you can usually see him luring the young and gullible to acquire gems that they don't need, to establish credit histories that will set the stage for future judgments against them, and-if by some miracle they don't default-to surrender a good portion of their lifetime earnings to Willie Whelan.

Willie is, in many respects, a great guy-provided you don't buy anything from him or take him too seriously. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my bright, young, recently divorced assistant was seeing him.

I said to Hank, "It's not my place to approve or disapprove. I just hope she doesn't get hurt."

"Would be a shame, so soon after she got rid of Doug-the-asshole, as she's so fond of calling her ex. But what about it-will you come for dinner?"

I checked my mental calendar. I'd planned to suggest to Anne-Marie Altman, Hank's wife, that I take her to lunch to celebrate her birthday, but with this new investigation, there might not be time for that. "Okay," I said, "you can count me in."

"If you want to bring Jim-"

Jim, I thought, feeling a sinking sensation. I'd almost forgotten his unwelcome early-morning visit.

"No, I'll come by myself." I hadn't yet told Hank that I'd broken it off, and I was in no mood to discuss it now. Quickly I started down the hall, trying to remember where I'd tossed my bag and jacket on the way in.

Hank followed me. "Shar, is something wrong between-"

"Everything's fine," I lied. "And I'd better get going because I have a date tonight."

Hank looked both relieved and pleased. Every time I become irritated with his nosiness, I have to remind myself that it's not his fault that he loves me and wants me to be happy.

I'd been looking forward to a quiet evening at home, but when I got there, my little brown-shingled earthquake cottage-one of some four thousand built as emergency housing after the quake and fire of '06, and lovingly added onto by a succession of owners, including me-seemed less of a haven than it usually did. One reason, I knew, was the unsettling effect of Jim's visit. Another was that my fat black-and-white-spotted cat, Watney, had died in his sleep two months before, and I hadn't replaced him, didn't think it possible to replace him. But the chief reason was that the man who might have become the love of my life was living in

Palo Alto to be near his estranged, mentally ill wife, whose fragile emotional balance had been toppled as a result of my own bad judgment during a particularly complex investigation. Never mind that my lover, George Kostakos-who is a psychologist and ought to know-didn't blame me for her collapse. Never mind that he said it had been long in the making. I blamed myself, and I went about clad in the proverbial hair shirt, insulated by it against disappointment and loneliness.

But even self-created hair shirts could itch and chafe sometimes. And resentment could occasionally flare against a former lover who was uncondemning, caring, and honorable.

And after years of Wat's curmudgeonly companionship, a house without my cat was not a home.

I stowed the pouch containing Hilderly's gun in the strongbox, then went to the fridge and put away the little custard pies I'd bought at the restaurant. For a moment I considered a glass of wine, but drinking alone in the kind of mood I was in could lead to dangerous introspection. There was a new comedy I'd been wanting to see at the Northpoint, and if I hurried I could catch the early show. Quickly I took a shower to wash away the dust of Hilderly's apartment, then donned my soft old faded jeans and a sweater.

Before I left the house, however, I looked into my jewelry box at the love beads I'd kept there for more than twenty years. They glimmered in the day's fading light-opalescent blue and pink and green and yellow symbols of an era that perhaps was never as joyful or innocent as some of us remember it.