City of Whispers

by Marcia Muller

  The kid said, “If the sit/lie goes through, we’re all in trouble.”

  “The what?”

  “Fuckin’ city’s trying to pass a law that we can’t sit or lie on the sidewalks. That happens, they’ll bust all of us. My dad, he says I get busted, he’s not gettin’ me out. Says I can rot in jail. You been in jail, man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  He didn’t remember. “Lots of places.”

  The kid looked impressed. Darcy closed his eyes, turned his face up to the sun.

  “Wow. I hear the guards beat you up. The other prisoners bugger you.”

  He sort of nodded off. When he opened his eyes the kid was still staring at him. Darcy said, “Don’t go to jail if you can help it.”

  “I can take it.”

  “Sure you can, kid.”

  “Well, I can! You got any dope on you?”

  “No.”

  “Know where me and my buddies can score?”

  “No.”

  “How come? You look like you’re on something.”

  He had been, but he’d come down. Way down.

  He said, “Go away. Just go away and leave me alone.”

  It was full dark, and the kids had disappeared. He was starving. His leg was cramped from sitting on the cold sidewalk, and he got up and limped along the street. At one corner he found a dime, and at mid-block a quarter. He kept going, snout to the ground like a fucking snuffling pig.

  Animal, that’s what he was. Smelly, vicious animal.

  With the quarter he could call Mom collect. But why would she accept the charges? He could call Shar….

  No, he couldn’t. She’d turn him in to the cops when he told her what he’d done. He couldn’t take jail, not again. He’d better keep walking.

  Out here nobody looks at me.

  Sharon McCone

  The most recent Nobody sighting had been at a bar called M&M’s Lounge on Valencia Street in the Mission district. I knew M&M’s from when I’d lived a few blocks away on Guerrero Street: it had been there forever, a grimy holdout against the high-end clubs that had sprung up in the area. Developers had tried to unseat the owners, Mario and Madeline Traverso, but with no luck. The couple had been operating their establishment since the early seventies, and would continue to do so until either they or their last regular customer died.

  Cocktail time. I headed for my old neighborhood.

  The Mission district used to be an Irish and Italian working-class neighborhood. Then came the Latinos, who enlivened the scene there with their bodegas, salsa music, and colorful murals. Later, addicts and drug dealers infested the area. The most recent incursion was of hip, affluent people—some called them the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, since they mainly hailed from the suburbs—drawn to the Mission by a profusion of relatively inexpensive restaurants and nightclubs.

  No suburbanite would ever set foot in M&M’s.

  Outside it was grimy, with a glass-block window shielding its interior from passersby. Inside it was dark, and you had to pass through a red velvet curtain that smelled of dust and mildew. Black leatherette booths, a few tables, and a long bar covered with water stains from the drinks of generations. Mario—tall, thin, and bald with thick glasses and a hearing aid—presided in the lull before the evening rush. Two old men sat at the far end of the bar, rolling dice for drinks. I slipped onto a stool. Mario looked away from the TV mounted on the far wall, recognized me, and smiled.

  “Sharon McCone. Maddy and me’d about given up on you. Don’t come around to your old haunts much any more.”

  M&M’s had never been a “haunt” of mine, but when I’d been with All Souls Legal Cooperative I’d worked out a couple of minor problems—deadbeat checks—for Mario and his wife.

  I said, “Don’t get around much, period.”

  “Nonsense. I hear about you all the time.” He leaned toward me, lines beside his eyes crinkling with concern. “You got married. Not to that asshole, I hope.”

  “Which one?” My taste in men before Hy had been iffy, to say the least.

  “Well, the cop was okay, but the diddlyboppin’ one with the gold Jag was kinda flaky.”

  Diddlyboppin’? Oh, right—Don DelBoccio, the disk jockey.

  “What happened to him?” Mario asked.

  “He got a better job in Denver.”

  “And the cop?”

  “Got married and retired to the Gold Country.”

  “So who’s this one? I see he didn’t give you a wedding ring.”

  “I’m not wearing it tonight. On the job, you know.”

  Mario nodded and winked conspiratorially. “This one a good guy?”

  “The best.”

  “I heard about you getting shot in the head. Hell of a thing. You okay now?”

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Relieved to know it. What’ll it be?”

  “Draft beer, whatever you recommend.”

  Damn, he brought me a Bud.

  “Mario,” I said, “you remember a character named Chuck Bosworth? Blues guitarist, lately calls himself the Nobody.”

  “Yeah I do. Had to throw him outta here the other week—was bothering my customers with his caterwauling.”

  “He’s really that bad?”

  “That bad and then some.”

  “But once he was good.”

  “He had a so-so talent.”

  “D’you know where he’s living now?”

  Mario shook his head. “I don’t, but one of my regulars might. Guy calls himself Jimmy Crow.”

  “Jimmy Crow?”

  “Not his real name. These old guys, they like to go by what they call ‘handles.’ None of them’s who he says he is, none of them’s got a past. ’Course, most of ’em got a good reason to lose their history.”

  “What’s Jimmy Crow’s?”

  “Who knows? Whyn’t you ask him? He comes in right about eight every night, depending how good his watch is working.”

  I didn’t want to sit in the bar and wait till eight for Crow’s appearance, so I went out to my car and made a call to Lucy Bellasis. She sounded mildly tipsy on the phone, but when I told her I was interested in the Gaby DeLucci case she urged me to come to her house.

  The Bellassis home was a huge white pile of stucco and cornices and balconies and columns atop a rise covered in immaculately trimmed, unbelievably green grass. I’d driven past it many times on my way to Rae’s and Ricky’s house and had always wondered how anyone could live comfortably in such a grandiose structure.

  Lucy was tall and overly slender, with dark hair and gray eyes and delicate features. She looked far too young and casual to be mistress of such a large, formal home. Her jeans were ripped—although they had probably cost a small fortune—her green sweater was tight enough to show the outlines of her ribs, and her pointy-toed cowboy boots looked new and shiny. She held a goblet of white wine in one hand—a big goblet.

  “Come in, come in,” she said. “I’m so glad for the company. Park—that’s Parker, my husband—is away, and this mouse wants to play.” She hiccupped, said, “Oops, sorry!” and giggled.

  Oops is right. What have I gotten myself into?

  The house’s marble-floored entry was enormous, with a large round table topped by a vase of red roses in its center and fragile-looking chairs that probably nobody ever sat in along the sidewalls. Archways opened into a labyrinth of other rooms, and a wide staircase curved up the rear wall to the second story. Lucy led me into a vast, brightly lighted living room where every lamp was ablaze, and briefly I wondered if the woman was afraid to be home alone. Of course, she wasn’t totally alone; a place like this would require a platoon of live-in help. No, I decided, the lights were all on simply because the Bellassises could afford enormous utility bills.

  The living room was not as formal as the entry: one wall was covered with a large entertainment center, the other with a wet bar; the furnishings were of soft, buttery leather. Lucy went to the bar and poured me a gla
ss of wine without asking if I wanted any, then topped off her own.

  “Park’s gone a lot,” she said, flopping into the chair next to the one she’d indicated I should take, “and I get lonely.”

  “I imagine his business requires a lot of travel,” I said.

  “No, he just wants to get away from me.” Before I could process the remark, much less reply, she switched the subject. “You said on the phone that you’d like to talk about my friend Gaby.”

  “Yes—”

  “Don’t tell me Clarence is actually paying to find out who killed her.”

  “No—”

  “ ’Cause when she died he sure wanted to make the whole thing go away in a hurry. Gave me orders to pack up all the stuff she had at our apartment and either give it to charity or throw it out. Demanded her tuition back from Stanford. Had her car towed away. And that place where he had her buried, have you seen it?”

  “No, but—”

  “Awful, dinky little cemetery, nobody who’s anybody is buried there.” Her features grew mournful. “Not too many people came to the service, either because Clarence didn’t invite them or they couldn’t find the place.”

  “What d’you think of Clarence Drew?”

  She glowered, hatred overcoming grief. “He’s an ugly, two-faced little man who never gave a shit about Gaby. He tried to stay on her good side, because he wanted her to keep him on as executor of her parents’ trust so he could collect his fat salary. But she told me a couple of weeks before she died that she was thinking of making some changes and had made an appointment with a lawyer.”

  “What kind of changes?”

  “That she didn’t say. Gaby was a private person when it came to money.”

  “Who was the lawyer?”

  “Somebody big. Usually does criminal cases, but he took Gaby on because he was a friend of her father’s from way back. Give me a minute.” She put her fingers to her brow. “Bible name… That’s it—Solomon. You know, Solomon and Sheba.”

  I had an attorney friend named Glenn Solomon, but he didn’t practice family law. “You don’t know his first name?”

  She shook her head. “Gaby said he’d roomed with her father in college.”

  “What was your relationship with Gaby like?”

  “God,” Lucy said, “just thinking about it makes me miss her. We were so close—like sisters, since childhood—and we had such great times. Traveled, went on ski trips, decorated our apartment. We smoked our first joint together, got our first periods the same week. Driver’s licenses too. When she died my life seemed so empty.”

  “Did you have other mutual friends? A group you went around with?”

  “Not really. You know how tight some people can be? Like they understand each other, and there’s no room in the world for somebody else?”

  I didn’t; even though Hy and I were close—at some times seemed to have a telepathic connection—there had always been space in my life for others.

  I said, “Tell me about Gaby.”

  The front door opened. There were footsteps and a woman looked into the room. She was short, dressed in a blue sweatshirt and a long, chaotically patterned skirt whose colors didn’t match the shirt’s, and her scuffed sandals revealed dirty-looking feet. Her hair was pushed up and covered by a red tam. A man joined her: tall, heavily built, in jeans and a leather jacket that had seen better days. His longish blond hair hung down over his forehead.

  “Lucy?” the woman said. “Everything okay?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “Well, you look kind of stressed.”

  “I’m fine. What’re you doing here?” Lucy hadn’t appeared stressed to me, even though she’d been talking about Gaby. Now frown lines appeared and the area around her lips whitened.

  “Need to use Park’s computer,” the woman said. “Who’s your guest?”

  Lucy introduced me. The young woman was Torrey Grant, Lucy’s older sister. The man was Jeff Morgan, one of Bellassis Aviation’s charter pilots.

  Lucy said to Torrey, “Did Park say it was all right to use his computer?”

  “I always do.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking.”

  Torrey’s stance became defensive. “Well, I do.”

  Lucy sighed. “Go ahead then.”

  The two turned and went upstairs.

  Lucy muttered, “She’s such a pain in the ass.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “All ways. But that’s another story. Let’s just say she’s like an invasive plant, sending up shoots everywhere.”

  “Some people,” I said, thinking of Darcy, “are expert at worming their way into others’ lives. Once they’re in, they wiggle around till they take up too much room. Then they’re hard to dislodge.”

  “That’s Torrey.” Obviously upset, she excused herself and poured some more wine, held the bottle up questioningly to me. I shook my head.

  “So,” Lucy said, sitting down again, “back to Gaby.”

  “Yes, tell me more about her.”

  “She was funny and adventurous. She took flying lessons with me, then got into skydiving. Park was running his father’s FBO at Oakland Airport, that’s where we met him.”

  FBO: fixed base of operation. They offer aircraft tie-downs and rentals, fueling, flight training, charters, aircraft sales. Other services range from the basic—restrooms and telephones—to the luxurious—pilots’ lounges, exceptional customer service, conference and flight-planning centers, crew sleeping quarters. The Bellassis operation had recently moved from Oakland to SFO, where its facility was reputed to rival that of Signature, the top FBO worldwide.

  Lucy went on, “Gaby, she was generous; if you admired something of hers, all of a sudden it was yours. She was beautiful but, you know, she didn’t let it get in the way. Park fell in love with her at first sight. It wasn’t until she died that he even looked at me.” Her face grew melancholy, and she looked down at her left hand, where diamond wedding and engagement rings caught the light.

  “It wasn’t a love match between Park and me. We were both grieving so badly for Gaby. I guess that’s our strongest bond. And going on as we were—staying in college, planning careers—seemed so pointless. I mean, if it happened to her, who was to say it wouldn’t happen to us?”

  My skin prickled. Something there.

  “Why would you think the same thing might happen to you?”

  “… Well, life’s fragile, isn’t it? There’s really nothing and no one you can wholly trust in.”

  Yes, life’s fragile, but there’s something you’re not telling me. And I could question you till dawn, and you still wouldn’t reveal it.

  Mick Savage

  Tick Tack Jack Tullock didn’t want to talk about the old days.

  “That was then and this is now,” he said to Mick on the phone. “I’m a successful rancher, got a place in the community. Even got a family. No way I’m lettin’ it come out what I was back then. Besides, this Gaby chick you say was tryin’ to reform me, I don’t hardly remember her. And this Darcy guy, not at all.”

  “But you did know Laura Mercer. Lady Laura.”

  “Maybe. Well, yeah. But all that was over years ago. I can’t risk it comin’ out.”

  “Nothing’s going to ‘come out,’ ” Mick said patiently. “My questions are only for background on an unrelated case.”

  “Well, if it’s unrelated, why d’you need to ask them?”

  Good point. Frankly, Mick wasn’t convinced that poking around in the DeLucci murder was getting them closer to finding Darcy. Maybe Darcy had read about the case and visited Gaby’s grave out of morbid curiosity. Maybe he was on a self-guided tour of California cemeteries. Maybe he was just plain crazy.

  The latter was the best explanation. And the best solution to the problem was to turn it all over to the SFPD and let them find him and his motives. But, no, Shar had to protect the freak….

  He said to Tick Tack Jack, “Mr. Tullock, it’s my assignment to ask
these questions. If you’d like to speak with my employer—”

  “I don’t want to speak to nobody. I got a life here to protect. I got a rep-u-tayshun.”

  Mick suppressed a sigh. “I can have our lawyers draw up a document of confidentiality—”

  “ ‘Confidentiality.’ One of those words that don’t mean shit these days.”

  A new tack occurred to Mick. “Well, Mr. Tullock, if you’re so concerned with protecting your reputation, your involvement with the DeLucci murder must be serious. Something you didn’t tell the police?”

  “I never—”

  “Something to hide?”

  Long pause. “I never talked to the cops. They didn’t know about me and Gaby.”

  Mick waited.

  “Thing is… I can’t do this over the phone. How do I know you ain’t tapin’ it?”

  “I’m not. But if you’d prefer to talk in person, I can come there.”

  “To my ranch? No freakin’ way!”

  “You’re west of Portland, right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “I could meet you any place you wish.”

  “Determined, ain’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  Another pause, longer this time. “Well, if you bring along that document you talked about… You know where McMinnville is?”

  “I can find it.”

  “Okay, I got a place there where I can meet you. I’ll tell you the address and phone number. You call when whatever flight you catch gets in, and I’ll give you directions. In a way, it’ll be good to get this off my chest. Real good.”

  Darcy Blackhawk

  What happened to you?

  He was standing in an alley between two apartment houses across from the little brown girl’s building, but she hadn’t come out or gone in. She was his only friend in this city—maybe in the world—but he couldn’t make himself climb the steep marble steps and ring the bell. He was going to have to run away from there, just like he’d run away from Shar’s last night. And then where would he go and what would he do?

  No place.

  Nothing.

  When had the world gotten so scary?