No Sign of Murder

by Alan Russell

  “He’s in jail now. But he’ll get a good lawyer who will point out that he never committed any physical rape. And the same lawyer will try and discredit my client and make her testimony suspect.”

  “Will he harass her again when he’s released?”

  “I don’t think so. I might be wrong, but I think he lost his taste for terror.”

  I picked up my bottle and took a long pull. It didn’t quite wash the taste out of my mouth. I had consulted Norman Cohen on the case, and he had given me a personality profile of who and what the terrorist was, and how and why he got his jollies. But the larger part of our discussion centered on the fastest and most permanent way of reforming our man, a way short of murder, not that that option wasn’t discussed. I heard the kind of therapy shrinks never prescribe.

  And when I did get my hands on him, I practiced without a license for the better part of an hour. First, he pled with me, and then with God, and then there was only his begging, and the smell of fear, and his incontinence. I left him with my card, and the vow that I would kill him if he ever played his games again.

  “Hey,” said Ellen. She reached out a hand and touched mine. I returned her squeeze.

  “Did you enjoy?”

  The waiter hovered over us. He smiled at our hand-holding. Servers always like blooming love. It usually makes for bigger tips. We voiced our satisfaction, rubbing our tummies in a pantomime for further show.

  “Very good,” he said. His accent was that of someone not long in this country. He presented us with the bill and fortune cookies. The Chinese have always known how to combine the bitter with the sweet.

  “You pick,” I said.

  Ellen chose the cookie the farthest away from her. Human nature. The fortune cookie is always greener on the other side. I took the hand fate dealt me. Mine read: Paris is the San Francisco of Europe.

  “Let’s trade,” she said.

  We switched the slips. Ellen’s read: Romantic Prospects Are Near.

  “I don’t like yours as much as mine,” said Ellen.

  “That’s the way the fortune cookie crumbles.”

  “I still don’t like it,” she said.

  “Complain directly to the source,” I said. “There is a little fortune cookie factory not too far from here.”

  “Where?”

  “Near the spumoni. Let’s go.”

  We took a bus to North Beach, and then backtracked a little by walking over to Cadell Place. It’s a little alley that few people would walk up without a reason. We had a reason. Ellen noticed the smell first. She could have led, could have floated in the air on the aromatic trail, but followed me to a little door front.

  I opened the door and gave a big smile. Three old Chinese women looked up. It wasn’t Willy Wonka’s factory, but it was unique. We walked down some steps into an honest-to-goodness mini-fortune cookie factory. Bags and bags of the cookies took up most of the room. We did a lot of watching and smelling. A little conveyor belt sent the hot cookie dough along the line. A machine crimped the dough into the characteristic seashell forms, and the women made sure the fortunes were inserted. I liked the last part, liked the idea of hands inserting the fates instead of machinery.

  The Chinese women didn’t speak any English, but Ellen understood their gestures very well. They were proud of their little room and its wares. We were treated to some broken fortune cookies, and after bowing our thanks made our exit.

  Arm in arm we walked around North Beach. In my mind North Beach is synonymous with pasta and sleaze and freaks, in that order, but increasingly I find those are just memories. The Italian accents on the streets, the staccato arguments that used to sound like opera intrigue, are fewer and fewer. Now the accents are urbane. No bene. No goddamn bene.

  The avant-garde made their stand in North Beach in the fifties and sixties, brought with them their poetry and music, but those are now things of the past. A few husks remain, the City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio Cafe, but the happening is now somewhere else. The gypsies and street jesters moved on to a place where a cup of joe doesn’t cost ten dollars, and where herbal tea doesn’t go for more than herbal smoke.

  With the older Italians dying, and their children living in duplexes on the peninsula, the rich, and the Chinese who have pooled their money together to collectively become the rich, have taken over. Favorite stores and restaurants are going, going, gone. Even the flesh dens, the Condor Clubs and Big Al’s, are pale versions of what they were. When clip-and-strip joints become sanitized, they should close their doors.

  Supposedly Ellen and I were looking for spumoni, but it proved to be a hunt for another Grail. My spumoni spot was closed, and I didn’t want to settle for frozen yogurt. We passed by Finocchio’s, where packed houses have watched female impersonators for close to half a century. Columnist Herb Caen once noted, “Joe Finocchio lives off the labor of his fruits.”

  North Beach is North Beach, but on a summer weekend night, a tourist night, it wasn’t where we wanted to be, so we kept walking. It was a beautiful night, and our feet weren’t feeling the steps, so we covered a lot of ground. Walking and talking with a deaf person is not the easiest endeavor, so mostly we just touched and smiled. We decided on a nightcap near where we had started the evening at a lounge on Kearney. It was pricey, and glitzy, and made me long for the old bar that had been in its spot. I didn’t tell Ellen about that watering hole. She was too young, or I was too old. I was grateful the new bar didn’t put an umbrella in my Scotch. Ellen and I didn’t talk much. The place was too dark for her to lip read, and I was too tired to say anything anyway. We finished our drinks and walked outside.

  “Where’d you park?” I asked.

  “Is the night over?”

  “Yes.”

  She mentioned a garage, then shut her mouth. She was upset, and I didn’t feel very tolerant. We walked toward the garage, our steps too quick, so I stopped her with my hands.

  “I’m tired, okay? It was a long day, and tomorrow will be, too. I’d like to invite you over to my place, and I’d like to snuggle with you, but I need a rain check. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  For a short time, we walked more easily, but I ruined things by opening my mouth. I didn’t say anything, but I moved my lips while trying to remember some words. Ellen noticed.

  “I didn’t catch that,” she said.

  “I didn’t say anything. I was just trying to remember a line from Shakespeare. It seemed appropriate for the day.”

  “Which line?”

  “An ape’s an ape, a varlet’s a varlet, whether clad in silk or scarlet.”

  “Why that line?”

  “I talked with a varlet today,” I said, “and an ape. I much preferred the latter.”

  “Are you talking about the gorilla Anita worked with?”

  I nodded, and even in the dark I was able to detect a flush coming over Ellen’s face. “Why does everyone have to be so obsessed with Anita? Why do you have to be?”

  I was surprised at her anger. I didn’t have a ready answer, and Ellen didn’t seem to want to wait for one. We reached the garage, and she said good-bye without looking at me. I watched her present her stub at the window. An attendant went off to get her car.

  She kept her back turned to me, so I never had a chance to tell her good-night.

  11

  THE PHONE RANG IN the middle of a good dream, and I felt warm and didn’t want to be disturbed, so I let it ring knowing Miss Tuntland would probably pick it up on the fifth or sixth summons, but she didn’t. I finally reached for it.

  “This is Winter.”

  “And this is not your wake-up service. Or at least it shouldn’t be.”

  “Good morning, Miss Tuntland.”

  “It’s ten-thirty. It’s edging towards afternoon. I thought there was a certain exhibition you were going to today.”

  “There is. I am.”

  There was enough drill sergeant in her voice to get me to sit up straight.

  �
�I happen to know that Vincent’s speaking at the museum at one,” she said. “Hold on, I’ve got a call.”

  I was glad for the reprieve. Her other call gave me time to rub my eyes, scratch around, and yawn. She came back on the line.

  “Hello.”

  “Who was that?” I asked, already beginning to strip.

  “Just another one of my eccentric clients.”

  “Another one?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What’s he or she do for a living?”

  “He. And that’s privileged information.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like a doctor. The investigator in me would guess that your client is probably a doctor.”

  “Sorry, Sherlock. I’ve had that pleasure. The calls always come at the worst times. And the doctors think they’re God, not the son of, just God. And they always pay late. No, thank you. Having a doctor for a client violates my first rule.”

  “And what violates your second?”

  “Having a private detective.”

  “Should I ask about your third rule?”

  “Doing extra work for clients and not being compensated for it.”

  “I’m glad you don’t consider our little enterprises extra . . . ”

  “Bob’s Donuts and Pastry Shop.”

  “What?”

  “On Polk. That was the tip from my client. He told me he was meeting his friend there tomorrow, and also told me that they make the best doughnuts in San Francisco. I want, oh, two or three, no, make that four. I’ll skip my dinner salad. And surprise me with a variety.”

  “You’re an extortionist.”

  “I know Vincent’s real name.”

  “Bob’s Donuts,” I said out loud, writing the name down.

  “Neal Patchen,” she said, as I continued to write, “aka ‘Real Passion.’ He actually used that one for a while in his experimental days, and the skinny is he lived up to it. On and off the canvas. Neal’s from Arizona. He had his bohemian days, but he never came close to being a starving artist. His parents are well off, father a developer or something like that.”

  “What should I know about his art?”

  “What you’d expect from any artist that’s about forty. A lot of stages.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “He sold his first paintings during his ‘Real Passion’ days, twenty years ago. He was sort of an obscene Peter Max. Then he became serious, didn’t sign his works ‘Real Passion.’ Signed them ‘Patchen.’ Those were his Jackson Pollack and sand days, spent mostly in Santa Fe. He lived in an adobe home. Mixed paints and sand on his canvas. Mixed drugs, too. Made some pottery. And then left Santa Fe to do some traveling.”

  “How much drugs and how much traveling?”

  “A lot and a lot. He toured the world on high octane.”

  “And today?”

  “Espresso is supposed to be his drug of choice. And San Francisco is his roost.”

  “Lucky us.”

  “It took him a long time to find his muse. For a while his work was sort of surrealistic, then he started doing a variety of stuff, some modern, some impressionistic, and a lot of object art. About ten years ago he changed his name to Vincent. Everyone guesses the name comes from Vincent Van Gogh, but our Vincent doesn’t talk about it.”

  I scratched at my notes until I was satisfied, then asked, “Do you still want to defend him from my slurs?”

  Miss Tuntland was quiet for a time. “He’s not a Boy Scout,” she finally said, “but it’s hard telling truth from fiction. Sometimes artists act the way they do to get a name. If they’re outrageous enough, maybe their works will be noticed.”

  “And what did Vincent do to get his name?”

  “When he was Real Passion he had a unique way of signing his paintings. He ejaculated into a cup and mixed his semen with red paint. He said that made his signature a living thing, and added a primal nature to his work. A ‘modern fertility rite’ he called it.”

  I made a despairing sound. “What else?”

  “He gave a demonstration once during his sand-and-paint days. he cut himself, quite deeply, and let his blood mix with the paint. Said that you had to give of your life fluid to create. That caused quite a stir.”

  “Maybe I ought to hold court while I shave.”

  Miss Tuntland rightfully ignored me. “Object art allowed him, and continues to allow, his displays of fancy. Skeletons doing housework. Feathered model airplanes. Paintings that deserve hanging at Madame Tussaud’s. His stuff isn’t background, and neither is the artist.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means that while his reputation has grown, so has his penchant for playing a larger-than-life figure. He’s dressed in black for the last six years and likes capes. Being the center of attention says it mildly. Center of the world would be more to his liking.”

  “He’s a jerk, isn’t he, Miss Tuntland?”

  “Yes, Mr. Winter, but a very talented one.”

  “I can hear him talking to himself in the morning: ‘To be a poseur or a genius? That’s the poser.’ ”

  “Maybe he needs to be both.”

  “Shakespeare needed you buzzing in his ear, Miss Tuntland. And I need you like . . . ”

  “A doughnut needs its hole.”

  “Exactly so.”

  It was Saturday, but I knew Leland often worked weekends. Saving old and precious books was a labor of love for him. He truly believed future generations would one day appreciate his paper prizes, even if the present one didn’t. He fought the bureaucrats who tried to cut his funding, but mostly he fought the elements and the pressing forces of passing days. He worked against time, a quixotic battle, but one he never conceded. As the self-appointed guardian of the books, Leland was expert at rebinding texts, and patching paper. He railed at the chemicals twentieth-century publishers used in their paper, said that most books had a fifty-year self-destruct clock, and that it was only his elixirs and remedies that extended their lives. It’s Leland’s belief that libraries stand between humanity and the Dark Ages, and are the bastions of light in a confused age. I never argued the point, just regularly stopped by for my dose of light.

  The library was on the way to the museum. I wandered up to the third floor, stuck my nose in Special Collections, and asked if Leland was in. He heard my voice and came out from the back room, his expression sad. He was, he informed me, patching a “horribly mistreated first edition of Madame Bovary.”

  “Flaubert can wait,” I said. “There’s an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that you might like. It promises to be a study in perversity.”

  Leland said something no doubt profound in French that concluded with “mon ami.” It was almost enough to make me reconsider my invitation.

  The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is housed in the War Memorial Veterans Building. We entered the museum from Van Ness. Vincent wasn’t being touted as some local yokel with a paintbrush. His works were considered a major display of a living artist, an honor usually given to the half-dead. A marquee announced the Vincent exhibition. I paid for the two of us at the door and was given a brochure. The cover page showed Vincent working at an easel. It was a close shot, and didn’t clue people in to the background clutter.

  “Where to now?” asked Leland.

  “I’m tempted to wander around the museum,” I said, “but I’m going to have to concentrate on the Vincent exhibit. It involves a case.”

  “On-the-job culture.”

  I pointed dubiously to one of Vincent’s sculptures, something that looked like a multicolored anemone. “Yeah. The kind of culture they take at a free clinic.”

  Lee gave an exasperated flip of his shoulder and proceeded forward without me. Three large rooms had been set aside for the exhibition. A sign above the doorway to the first room read: VINCENT: THE EARLY YEARS. There were no naked baby pictures, but there were some of his Real Passion and Patchen works, and a retrospective of the times that produced them. Neither semen nor blood
letting was mentioned. Thank the Lord for little favors.

  Vincent’s early pieces were colorful and chock full of messages, none of them exactly subtle. The libidinous and the oppressed played and raged, sometimes even in the same painting. I compared his titles with his paintings, and they were just as blunt. Satyriasis was accurate, as was Raging Slaves and Primal Dance, which probably explained why I liked his pottery best. It looked functional and wasn’t gaudy, and there were no messages as far as I could see. As for his signatures on the clay, I wasn’t about to have them analyzed. That might have given a whole new meaning to sperm banks.

  Vincent’s Santa Fe days weren’t exactly Zane Gray, but the sand was real and the colors were desert genuine. I liked them fine for what they were: Heinz 57 on display. They were a gentler Vincent, and didn’t prepare me for the next room, which the entry sign announced as EVOLVING VINCENT.

  He hadn’t been idle during his touring and drugging days. He was a prolific sponge, capturing and releasing a lot of styles on canvas. If there was any continuity, any tradition, in his works, it was seen in the loudness of his colors. Vincent began putting subthemes in his paintings, background images that went beyond pelvic thrusts and worlds of madness. He started getting more complex, richer, busier. There was a lot going on in his paintings, and Vincent was ironic, even sardonic, in a lot of his works. He had two identical paintings, one titled Sunset in Hell and the other Sunset in Heaven. In both it looked like a McDonald’s was sinking off into the horizon.

  The third and largest Vincent room featured his art from the last ten years, art for the most part that amused and terrified. In his Cheep Milk birds mooed, while Purrafornailia featured cats purring as they chewed human fingers. Walkers On Parade showed an unfortunate group of geriatrics and their ambulatory equipment promenading in the style of The Spirit of ’76. Lee chose that moment to return to my side. He had evidently decided that this was art you didn’t have to talk about in hushed tones.

  “Join the parade?” he asked.

  Lee stepped lively, imaginary baton in hand, and marched over to where Vincent’s paintings were featured. I pretended I didn’t know him.