Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  The fact was, it simply wasn’t all that unusual for Harlan Pettibone to act obnoxious, and the fight on the night of Sam Raynor’s murder might just be another example of the behavior that would eventually get Harlan thrown out of the Navy. But suppose Harlan left the ice cream parlor around eleven. The Marines said he showed up at the club shortly before the fight started at 11:45. He’d been with a group of friends at Fenton’s, yet, if what Domingo said was true, Harlan was alone when he got to the club. What had he been doing in between? Had he somehow connected with Sam Raynor during that time? I wouldn’t be able to ask him that question until the Navy let him out of the brig Tuesday.

  I left Tony and Domingo to their bagels and rinse cycles and drove back to my apartment in Oakland. I ignored Abigail’s plaintive meows, advising her that there was still food in her bowl, perfectly acceptable food even if it was low-calorie and had been sitting there all morning. She finally gave up winding herself around my shins, plopped down at the food bowl and crunched a mouthful or two before going off to wash herself in the living room. While all this was going on, I picked up the phone and called Duffy’s number at Treasure Island, only to discover that the chief had gone away for the weekend. Then I called the unlisted number I’d pried out of Denise Padilla. There was no answer, not surprising. Yesterday she told me she and Ruben were planning to go down to Salinas this weekend to bring her son Scott home to Benicia.

  Watching the two young Marines doing their laundry spurred me to do something about the pile of dirty clothes stashed in the large basket at one end of my closet. While I was at it, I did some long-neglected housecleaning chores. I might as well have gone to Monterey, I thought as I ran the vacuum cleaner, its noise, as usual, sending Abigail to hide in the bedroom closet. I wasn’t going to get much work done on the investigation. Denise and Ruben Padilla were presumably in Salinas, and Harlan was out of reach until Tuesday. Nor would I have the opportunity to do much socializing here. My father and his friend Isabel Kovaleski had not yet returned from their jaunt up the Oregon coast, though they were due back sometime this weekend. My brother Brian and his family had gone to visit his in-laws in Eureka. Cassie and her new love Eric were off on another of their romantic weekends, I forgot where. And Alex hadn’t called. In fact I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days. When I called his apartment, I got his answering machine. Maybe he had duty today.

  Finally bored with housework and laundry, I checked the movie listings and headed for Berkeley, where I had a solitary meal at an Indian restaurant and saw a movie I’d been wanting to catch. I got home at ten-thirty. My answering machine held nothing but a couple of hang-ups. I fed Abigail and was propped up in bed with a book on my lap when the phone rang. When I picked up the receiver, I heard Joe Franklin’s voice, radiating impatience. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours.”

  In the background I heard music, a loud guffaw of laughter, the buzz of talk.

  “Where are you?” I asked, looking at my bedside clock. It was just after eleven.

  “The Kings X bar on Piedmont. Get over here. I think I’ve found Rosie.”

  Thirty-five

  IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN-THIRTY WHEN I PARKED MY car in front of a now-closed florist’s shop near the intersection of Piedmont Avenue and Pleasant Valley Road. I crossed the street at the light and entered the Kings X. Joe Franklin was hunched over the bar smoking a cigarette. At his elbow was a tall glass with an inch of amber liquid at the bottom.

  When he saw me, Franklin ground out his cigarette in an ashtray, tossed back the rest of whatever he was drinking, and rose from his bar stool. He wore blue jeans, a dark blue shirt, his gray windbreaker, an old pair of sneakers on his feet. I was dressed for movement and comfort myself, in black sweatpants, black T-shirt, and running shoes. In my pocket I carried only my ID, car keys, and a small flashlight. Neither of us said anything until we were out on the sidewalk.

  “I think Rosie’s in the cemetery,” Franklin said.

  I nodded and we both walked in that direction. Piedmont Avenue dead-ends at Mountain View Cemetery, a large green oasis spread over the lower slopes of the Oakland hills. A series of roads wind up grassy knolls dotted with oaks and pines. Interspersed with the trees are graves and crypts, mostly simple ones decorated with flowers and plants, the names carved on the stones reflecting the Bay Area’s ethnic diversity. The top of one central hill of the cemetery, with a panoramic view of the bay and its cities, is studded with elaborate monuments to the wealthy and socially prominent. Charles Crocker, Frank Norris, and Julia Morgan are up there, and one large crypt bears the name of Samuel Merritt, for whom Lake Merritt near downtown Oakland was named. Most of these ornate tombs were built in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. Whenever I look at them, I wonder about the need for extending ostentation into the afterlife. A prime location, but the residents aren’t there for the view.

  I’d been to the cemetery before, always during the day. Now as we approached it, I looked at the gate, closed across the entrance, and the darkness beyond, remembering two funerals in the chapel located just up the drive on the other side of the cemetery gate. The first took place my second year in college, when my grandfather died. The second was a few years ago when my grandmother joined him in that plot marked by a single marble stone marked “Howard,” perched on one of those hills. Sometimes I went there with my father, and left flowers on the earth where it joined the marble.

  Joe Franklin’s voice brought me into the present. “This afternoon I talked to a guy who carves headstones.” He pointed to the left, at two businesses providing the monuments with which the living commemorate the dead. “He says some of the homeless people in the neighborhood have been camping out inside the cemetery.”

  “Makes sense. From what you told me, they’ve been harassed lately. And Rosie’s been driven away from the construction site by the workers. The cemetery is as far as she can go up Piedmont and still stay in the neighborhood.” We stopped at the entrance to the cemetery. I stepped out into the middle of the street and surveyed the high iron gate that now barred entry. “Has this guy actually seen her go in or come out? How does she get in there after hours with a shopping cart?”

  “The gate’s open till five,” Franklin said, gesturing at the sign. “Anybody can come in or out, on foot or in a car. The stonecutter says people like to walk in the cemetery. It’s quiet and pleasant, like a park with gravestones. I figure Rosie pushes her cart inside and hides until dark. He’s sure it’s Rosie. A woman in a straw hat with a pink rose. He saw her pushing her cart out the gate early yesterday morning.”

  I looked at the gate and tried to recall the layout of roads, buildings, and other points of interest just inside the cemetery entrance. To the left was a little pond with a steep slope beyond it, then the Jewish section of the cemetery. Not much cover there. Directly ahead was a road that led to the chapel. On the right were several administration buildings, arrayed along the fence that separated the cemetery from the houses along a short street called Ramona Avenue. There were lots of trees and bushes along the property line. As far as I could tell, that was the best place for Rosie to hide.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  On either side of the iron gate closed across the cemetery entrance were concrete walls, chest high. I took a short run at the right-hand wall and easily hauled myself to the top. Franklin did the same, with more agility than I expected from a man his age. Must be all that golf. We jumped down to the sidewalk on the other side and stopped to get our bearings. Outside, on Piedmont Avenue, we’d had the benefit of street lamps. Now that we were inside the cemetery, there was some lighting on the main road that ran in front of the buildings, but where we were going, into the foliage along the fence, it was very dark.

  There’s something about a cemetery at night that brings a chill to the base of the spine and makes me recall all those ghost stories told around a summer campfire when I was a kid. My grandmother’s brother, Woodrow, a mining
engineer in the Sierra Gold Country near Jackson, would tell us bloodcurdling tales of Gold Rush bandits come back to haunt the living. And down in Monterey, my mother’s Italian fishermen relatives had their own set of tales about ghosts and empty boats plying the rugged dark sea. 1 pushed back the specters and focused on reality, telling myself that even if I was sneaking into a cemetery in the middle of the night, most of the residents were dead and presumably couldn’t hurt me.

  My eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, but the tangle of trees and bushes to the right looked impenetrable. I shone the flash briefly, just enough to discern a narrow path leading back to some kind of shed. I led the way along the path, Franklin close behind me, both silent as we skirted the bushes along the fence line. It was a still night, no wind. My heart and the sound of my breathing seemed loud, as did the rustle of leaves as Franklin and I pushed past the bushes. From a house somewhere on Ramona Avenue I heard music. In the background was the ever-present tempo of the city.

  I held the flash low and used it only when absolutely necessary, for fear its light might spook Rosie. We found her under an overgrown tangle of bushes along the boundary, about thirty yards from the cemetery gate. We might have missed her had I not seen a sudden movement from the corner of my eye, the sway of a low-hanging branch, revealing the dull gleam of metal. I stopped dead in my tracks, listening, and so did Joe Franklin. Then I moved slowly in the direction of the bushes. The motion I saw could have been caused by anything from a stray cat to a raccoon, but as we closed in on the foliage, I pointed my flash at the metal object. It was the shopping cart. It contained a dark plastic bag that bulged, full of bottles and cans. On top of the bag was a straw hat with a cloth rose.

  Rosie stood behind the cart, in front of her rolled-out sleeping bag, her eyes wide and wild in her white face. She had armed herself against possible attack. Her right hand gripped the nail-studded stick. Her left was wrapped around the long neck of a corkless wine bottle, ready to use it as a club.

  I put both my hands up in the air and slowly knelt in the grass. Joe Franklin followed suit.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Rosie,” I told her. “I want to talk with you.”

  She didn’t say anything. The three of us stared at each other. Once again I was struck by how young she looked. This was no little old lady whose pension didn’t stretch far enough. Rosie was close to my own age, and that in itself chilled me. Could what happened to her also happen to me?

  Joe Franklin’s right hand moved slowly to the inside of his unzipped jacket. He pulled out two clear plastic freezer bags and held them up so she could see them.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked her. “You like cookies? My wife makes wonderful chocolate chip cookies.” He tossed one packet toward Rosie and it fell at her feet, on the folds of the sleeping bag. “And this is dried fruit, apricots and figs and prunes, all mixed together.” He tossed the second packet and it fell slightly to her right.

  “I had dinner already.” Her voice sounded rusty from disuse. She glanced quickly down at the plastic bags, and speared one, then the other, with the nail-studded stick, raising them to eye level. She scanned the contents, plopped the wine bottle on top of her bundle and pulled the plastic bags off the nail. “Somebody gave me half a burrito. Beans and cheese and chicken and rice. It was good. I like cookies, though.”

  “My name’s Jeri. This is Joe. We’ve been looking for you.”

  “I know. Somebody told me.” She lay her nail-studded stick across the shopping cart, careful to keep it within reach. Then she wiped the back of her left hand, the one that held the plastic bags, across the lower part of her face. “You cops?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m a private investigator. Joe’s a friend. We just want to talk with you.”

  “I haven’t done anything bad,” the woman said with a defiant tilt of her chin. “Some people don’t like it when I scratch my mark, but I only do it on things that are mine. And when they deserve it.”

  “I understand. I know you haven’t done anything bad. I just wondered—”

  “I saw you before,” Rosie interrupted. “You were sitting on a wall.” She pulled open one of the bags and jammed a cookie into her mouth. She chewed noisily and swallowed. “These are good. I used to bake, long time ago.”

  “Yes, that was me, sitting on the wall.” I was surprised that she’d remembered our brief seconds of eye contact at the corner of Howe and Forty-first. The woman was savvier than I’d assumed. “It was a Friday afternoon, two weeks ago. I was sitting on the wall in front of the apartment building, kitty-corner from the lot where you like to sleep.”

  Rosie’s voice was garbled as she chewed on another bite of cookie, but resentment came through loud and clear. “Not anymore. Somebody’s building stuff there. I had to find another place. I was at the school for a while but it wasn’t safe. This is safe.” She gestured in the direction of her neighbors, the ones at rest under their gravestones. “Good thing I don’t mind dead people.” She laughed, a startling wheeze ended by a cough as she aspirated cookie crumbs.

  “You okay, Rosie?” She thumped her chest with one hand and nodded. “I’d like to know if you saw something important on Saturday, the day after you saw me sitting on the wall. Late at night, not during the day. A man was killed inside that apartment building.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Rosie said, hand brushing her stick, as though for reassurance. “Anybody says I did is lying.” She pulled open the second plastic pouch and fished around inside, shooting a sharp look at Joe Franklin. “I hope these prunes are pitted. My teeth can’t take any surprises.” Startled, he assured her that they were. She popped some of the dried fruit into her mouth, chewed, then stopped suddenly. “Was that the night the cop cars came?”

  Excitement surged and I leaned closer. “Yes. You were there. You saw them.”

  “I thought they were after me.” In the dim light Rosie looked a bit sheepish.

  “Why?” Franklin asked. I shot him a warning look.

  “I scratched my mark on two cars.” Rosie snickered. “One of ‘em was fancy, lotsa chrome. I’ll bet somebody was pissed to see that. They don’t always see it right away, ‘cuz I put it low down on the back of the car, on the side where the driver doesn’t sit.” She laughed again, pleased with herself.

  Low right rear fender, I thought. “Did the cars deserve it?” I asked.

  “Damn straight.” Rosie’s face assumed an aggrieved expression. “The way some people park. Honest to God. They were blocking both the curb cuts. I couldn’t get my cart up to the sidewalk. I had to go down to the parking lot driveway and double back. So I scratched ‘em good. Soon as I got bedded down for the night, the cop cars came.”

  Rosie stopped and wiped her hand across her mouth. “I thought somebody saw me and called ‘em. Coulda been that guy in charge of building stuff. He threatened to call the cops on me after I scratched my mark on that little house they put up. So I hightailed out of there. Been laying low since. I heard on the street somebody got killed, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. Scratching stuff is about as far as I go. A’course, if somebody attacks me, like those damn kids, I got to defend myself.” She patted the nail-studded stick.

  I’d been kneeling on my legs so long I could feel them prickling from the weight of my body. I shifted position, trying to get more comfortable. “I know you didn’t have anything to do with the murder, Rosie, but since you were there, you might have seen something important, that would help us find out who killed that man.”

  Rosie was munching on another cookie. Now she reached down into the cart’s depths, pulling out a bottle of something that looked like cheap fortified wine. She unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow, then offered the bottle to me and Joe Franklin. I shook my head, my stomach lurching at the smell of the bottle’s contents. Franklin reached for the container and took a quick sip. As he handed the bottle back to the homeless woman, his mouth struggled to mask a grimace.

/>   “You mean before I scratched the cars?” Rosie asked, stashing the bottle in her cart. She still didn’t trust us enough to sit down. Instead she leaned on her cart, one hand resting on her stick. “Somebody was arguing.”

  There were a lot of somebodies in Rosie’s life, I thought. Were these particular somebodies important to the Raynor case?

  “Tell us about it,” I said, trying not to show my eagerness.

  “They were loud. I got bad vibrations so I hid.”

  “Could you hear what they were saying?”

  “High, low? No, that wasn’t it. Tidy? Tiny bones, maybe. Tiny bones, tiny bones.” It sounded like gibberish to me. Indeed, as Rosie repeated them, they took on a singsong cadence.

  “When did you first see them?” Franklin asked her. A few days ago I would have told him to let me ask the questions. Tonight I figured he’d earned the right to play detective, particularly after drinking that rotgut.

  “I was coming down the street, on the same side as that building where I saw her”—she pointed at me—“sitting on the wall. Somebody was arguing. I could hear their voices across the street. They were standing right by that corner where I was going, so I stopped, hopin’ they’d go away.”

  “A man and a woman?” I asked. Perhaps it was the same couple Kevin Franklin had seen, right after he left Ruth’s apartment. He hadn’t been able to tell either.

  “Dunno,” Rosie said with an unconcerned shrug. “They was both wearing pants. Tiny bones, tiny bones.” She sang the last words to a tune of her own devising.

  “Did one of them have long hair?” Rosie shrugged again and yawned. I didn’t want to press her too hard on this one point. I might lose her. “Could you hear what they were arguing about?”