Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

by Julie Smith

  You won’t believe what I found to go with it: a wrap-around black satin skirt that only continued wrapping for a few inches down from the waist, so it looked like it was slit up to the wazoo, but it actually revealed a good deal more than a slit would have. Like most of my left leg. What there was of it fell to the calf, slick and shiny as a wetsuit.

  The entire outfit cost me twenty-five dollars.

  I don’t know where drab, workaday Rebecca was that day, but whoever was impersonating her bought a pair of false eyelashes, a pair of sheer black nylons, and what my sister Mickey calls wicked-woman shoes—high-heeled, open-toed sandals.

  Then she stole Rebecca’s good gray Volvo from the parking lot, drove it to Rebecca’s Telegraph Hill apartment, and let herself in as if she owned the place.

  I am going to take time out to tell you what she found there, as I am very fond of my apartment, and you are going to be spending a lot of time there. The colors are stark, wintry ones. For warmth I have a grand piano, an enormous window with a great view and, underneath the window, the thing I love most in the world: a hundred-gallon saltwater aquarium. It teems with hermit crabs and fish in colors both subtle and bold, and even shrimp. But the anemones—translucent, pink, and always reaching for something just outside their grasp—are my favorites.

  Because the aquarium doesn’t quite fill the space under the window, it’s flanked by the fattest, most luxuriant asparagus ferns you ever saw, each like a green basketball on its white ceramic stand.

  It’s a beautiful, wonderful apartment, its sophistication marred only by a funny little Don Quixote sculpture on the coffee table—an incongruous, cornball item weighing about a ton. I’d bought it in Mexico with my ex-boyfriend, and I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.

  So that’s what the stranger saw when she went into Rebecca’s apartment that day. She walked right through to the bedroom, where she spent half an hour applying the eyelashes, cursing every minute, and then she slithered lamia-like into the rest of the caparison. Peering eagerly into Rebecca’s mirror, she gazed upon none other than Rebecca Schwartz looking like a silly ass.

  Having returned from whatever astral plane I’d been on, I looked in that mirror and hooted like a gibbon. When I’d finished making sport of myself, I peeled off the eyelashes, slithered lamia-like out of everything else, stepped into the shower, and washed that alter ego right out of my hair.

  I wore a black sweater and a pair of violet corduroys to Chris and Larry’s.

  Chris met me at the door, looking about nine feet tall in a yellow jumpsuit. Before you could say, “habeas corpus,” she plunged right in: “You’re gonna like this guy.”

  I didn’t take it as bad news. I was wearing boring old corduroys, but I had got up the nerve to put on the wicked-woman shoes, and I was feeling pretty reckless. “Tell me more,” I said.

  Chris led me into the kitchen on the pretext of getting some wine. “He’s Parker Phillips, who’s just moved here from pigball,” she said. “An architect.”

  Now of course I knew he hadn’t moved from pigball, but I’m used to Chris. Since Larry’s from Seattle, I deduced that was what she meant. Chris is a very good lawyer, but she gives the appearance of being scatterbrained because whenever she can’t think of a word, she just substitutes a made-up one. “Pigball” was her latest.

  “What’s he look like?” I asked. I don’t like to think I’m a female chauvinist pig, but I do set a certain store by a man’s appearance.

  “Very New England. Not a West Coast type at all. Six feet tall, smokes a pipe, light brown hair, good bones. Ready to meet him?”

  Who was going to say no after that description?

  Parker Phillips had a firm handshake and perfect manners to go with it. He also seemed a little on the shy side, a quality that I feel shows a person isn’t unduly impressed with himself.

  “Chris says you just moved to San Francisco,” I said when Larry and Chris had faded discreetly into the kitchen.

  “Yes. My marriage broke up last year, and I’d been wanting to get out of Seattle for months. So when I got a job offer here, I took it. It seemed like a good place to live, and anyway I already knew two people here—Larry and my sister Carol, who’s a student at San Francisco State.”

  Then he asked me about my law practice, and I started to warm up to him. I like men who ask me about myself. That old high school advice—that you should talk to men about what they’re interested in—is a good way to bore yourself silly.

  I told Parker all about my star client. Then, as he still seemed interested, I told him about my bordello tour and regaled him with a few of Elena’s stories. I even confessed my silly shopping trip. He was kind enough to admire my wicked-woman shoes and asked if they were good for dancing. I said I’d show him sometime.

  Which I did, after dinner; we left early and went to a little place I know.

  After we danced awhile, we talked some more and I learned several things of interest:

  When he laughed, he used his whole face.

  He played tennis.

  He liked classical music.

  His favorite movie was King of Hearts, which is only my third favorite, but that’s close enough.

  I was quite prepared to pack for an indefinite stay and run away with him if he asked me.

  He didn’t, so I invited him over to see my aquarium. It was a bold move, but I had on wicked-woman shoes.

  I left the lights off, because the aquarium was lit, and so was the whole city of San Francisco on the other side of the window. We sipped brandy and smoked a joint. The anemones performed their endless, delicate, futile tentacle-dance. The hermit crabs were good for comic relief. San Francisco was lambent as the Emerald City. It was better than King of Hearts, so after a while I made popcorn. A while after that, we made love.

  Chapter Five

  Elena spoke before I could: “Rebecca, you poor baby, out on a night like this without your keys! Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m at the Hall of Justice. Why aren’t you?”

  “I forgot you didn’t know. It wasn’t a raid after all. Just some sort of dumb practical joke arranged by some of the guests. The shots were blanks, thank God. But what are you doing at the Hall?”

  “Trying to prove I didn't steal your car. Would you mind talking to the nice officer?”

  I handed him the phone; he asked her some questions, and they negotiated. I was tired and I wanted to go home.

  * * *

  It was your basic fairytale evening, all right. But Parker and I were both mature adults with degrees from the well-known school of hard knocks. We didn’t plight our troth on the spot. By mutual unspoken consent, we decided to exercise reasonable caution with each other. We went tidepooling the next day and had a liquid, romantic lunch at one of those roadside fish places down the Peninsula, but we didn’t spend Sunday night together.

  In fact, we didn’t see each other again until the next weekend, when we went to a Bunuel movie. I was in love, but this is not unusual. My average (except for the two years I was with Gary Wildman) is four times a year, and the average length of the infatuation is three weeks. I keep seeing my lovers—usually about three to six months—but the edge is generally off after the first few dates, when I start finding fault. I didn’t find any in Parker the night of the movie, though. He didn’t whine at me about his broken heart, and he did laugh at my jokes. I remained in love and we made a third date.

  The third Friday in November, the appointed day for our third date—and incidentally the longest day of my life—it started raining before I woke up and showed no signs of letting up for the next thirty-nine days and thirty-nine nights. I spent the morning calming a client whose impending divorce was threatening her reason and then popped over to Heshie’s with Chris for a pastrami sandwich and a cream soda.

  “I hear you’re going out with pigball tonight,” she said when we were settled. “Larry and I asked him to dinner and he confessed. Is he Mr. Right or not?”


  “He seems pretty solid.”

  “God, Rebecca, you are the most conservative woman I’ve ever met. No wonder you’re never in love for more than three weeks. How in hell did you ever manage to move in with Gary?”

  “I wasn’t nearly so cautious in those days. Besides, it was entirely his idea; he practically dragged me to his cave by the hair.”

  “You never really told me why it didn’t work out.”

  “His decision to live with me was the last one he ever made while we were together.”

  “What are you talking about? I always thought you and Gary had the most egalitarian relationship of anyone I knew. Larry thought so, too.”

  “Yeah, so did I. It wasn’t till much later that I realized I had a son instead of a lover. It was all very subtle, you see. Nobody is going to ask a feminist lawyer to cook his meals and do his laundry. He didn’t want a mother for that stuff.”

  “So what do you mean?”

  “He wanted to be told what to do: what courses to take, whether to listen to classical music or rock—even, I kid you not, whether to have a dalliance with someone else.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “I thought at the time we were merely discussing these things in a sharing, adult fashion, but I realized later that I was making all the decisions. And not only that; Gary had to be constantly reassured about his self-doubts and patted on the head and told what a good boy he was.”

  “It couldn’t have been that bad. If Gary wants a mother, what’s he doing now with a twenty-two-year-old peach blossom?” This was a bit of a sore spot, because Gary left me for said peach blossom.

  “He outgrew me,” I said. “You might be able to carry on a mother-son relationship forever, except that little boys grow up and rebel against their moms. If you recall, it hit me pretty hard when he left me for Melissa.”

  Chris nodded.

  “But now you have pigball.”

  “Parker.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Yes. And I meant it when I said he seemed solid. I think he actually might be a man who’s able to take care of himself.”

  “What are you two doing tonight?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Probably dinner and a movie. We’d better go back to the office so I won’t miss his call.”

  That was about the only reason for going back to the office that Friday, to tell the truth. I didn’t have any appointments, so I planned to spend the afternoon doing research on some pending cases. But I could have done that any time, and the longer I could put it off the better, in my opinion. The one thing I hate about law is poring over musty old law books.

  While I pondered, weak and weary, the telephone rang. Thinking it was Parker, I didn’t pick it up till the third ring, so as not to seem too eager. It was Elena Mooney.

  “Rebecca, I’m in a hell of a fix. Have you ever heard of the FDOs?”

  “No.”

  “It stands for Friday Downtown Operators. They’re a bunch of—oh, fifty or seventy-five young businessmen who meet for lunch every Friday just so they can invite whatever sweet young things they’ve had their eyes on. It’s supposed to be an honor to get an invitation.”

  I believe I may have snorted, but Elena went on anyway. “Well, apparently a lot of them wanted to go to the Strumpets’ Strut, but they couldn’t get tickets, so they got it into their heads to have their own. They called Jeannette von Phister and asked if she knew of a bordello they could rent for it, and she set it up with me. The girls and I will be there as hostesses, but it’s just a party—nobody’s going to turn any tricks. The guys will all have dates anyway.

  “The problem is, it’s tonight and I had a wonderful black guy who wears an ice-cream suit all lined up to play piano, but he’s sick. I know it’s short notice, but do you think you could possibly…”

  “Elena, I’d love to, but I have a date.”

  “For heaven’s sake, bring him.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t. What if I ran into someone I knew?”

  “For Christ’s sake, it’s just a party. You were at the Strumpets’ Strut with every pimp and whore in San Francisco, and so were the chief of police and the sheriff. What’s the difference?”

  “That wasn’t at a bordello.”

  “Look, I live there. All it is is a party at Elena Mooney’s rather overdecorated Pacific Heights home. If no one’s turning tricks, how’s it a bordello?” She should have been a lawyer.

  “They got you last time for ‘keeping a disorderly house.’ How do you know the cops won’t raid it?”

  “Uh uh. Anybody gets disorderly, he gets thrown out. And don’t worry about the music. The fellow in the ice cream suit comes in every weekend and people are always dancing. The place is soundproofed.”

  I couldn’t see a single thing against it. If I bumped into some lawyer I knew, the incontrovertible fact was that he was there too. Anyway, everybody knows I’m Elena’s lawyer. What could be more natural than helping out a friend? I told Elena I’d call Parker and call her back.

  Parker jumped at it.

  “There’s just one thing,” said Elena when I called back. “Could you wear something sort of—uh—in keeping with the occasion?”

  I told her I had just the thing—my Magnarama outfit—and arranged to come early so she could work on my hair and face. Since the make-up session was bound to bore Parker, he and I decided to come in separate cars.

  It was still raining that night, and I had to wear a trench coat and boots. Once they were off, Elena breathed a sigh of relief. “That’ll do nicely,” she said. “In twenty minutes you won’t recognize yourself.”

  I handed over my eyelashes, and she wrestled them on in about two seconds. Next, she applied blue eye shadow and a lot of rouge that followed the cheekbones exactly and didn’t look half-bad. I said I wanted a beauty mark, and she obliged me—on the right cheek between the nose and mouth. She fossicked in her bureau for the right shade of carmine lipstick and let me apply it myself, a skill I learned in junior high. From another drawer, she pulled the pièce de resistance—a silver lamé turban, so help me. It covered every strand of my Montgomery Street coiffure and, with the addition of a pair of dangling silver earrings, transformed workaday Rebecca into the expensive courtesan of my fantasies.

  I didn’t look like a streetwalker, you understand. Merely a very high-class lady of uncertain reputation. I was profoundly pleased with the effect.

  Elena’s own hair was pulled back from her face and piled very high in front, but was left hanging loose in back. Sophisticated, but not quite nice. She wore a slithery black velvet number that was long on sleeves and short on skirt. In fact, I learned that night that the miniskirt has never gone out of style at fancy cathouses. I was the only one of us filles de joie whose knees were covered, but then I had a slit to the wazoo, so what did it matter?

  Elena took me to the kitchen for a spot of sherry before the guests arrived. The other hostesses were gathered round the table, drinking only tea and soft drinks. Though they were passing a joint around, they were pros and didn’t want to smell like alcohol. Hilary, Renée, and Stacy, the other members of the co-op, were also my clients, so we knew each other from jail. I was introduced to Kandi, whose last name could have been Floss or Apple or Kane with no suspension of disbelief required. If you’d told me she’d made it up and was really Stephanie or Betsy or Suzy Q, I wouldn’t have had any. She was a sugarplum that walked like a woman. Sensuous as homemade fudge, airy as cotton candy, and cloying as divinity. She wasn’t any of those, though: she was a meringue. (This is not a sexist remark, merely an observation: I am a cinnamon heart, Parker is English toffee, former President Carter is a Mr. Goodbar, Richard Nixon is a licorice whip, Pat Nixon is a frosting rose from a birthday cake. I could go on forever.)

  Kandi had frilly blond hair and a figure that bounced with self-congratulation. But I don’t have to describe her too much because you know her: think of the homecoming queen at your high school, and there you have it. Half all-American girl, half budding starlet, and
so radiant your eyes hurt to look at her. Only Kandi had passed out of the girl stage and the budding stage, and had flowered into a confectioner’s idea of a prostitute. She wore an apricot chiffon dress, long-sleeved and form-fitting, with a furbelow of a skirt like skaters wear. Neckline, cuffs, and hem were fluffy with tiny, downy apricot feathers.

  As for Hilary, Renée, and Stacy, if they’d come to court in the outfits they had on, they’d have been spending that November in the pokey. Hilary had on a nurse’s uniform, thigh-high with white sequins all over.

  Renée—a large, fortyish woman—wore a scarlet, plunging blouse of some shiny material, a wide belt, and a tight black skirt that hugged her opulent fanny and fell nearly to her knees, but not quite.

  Stacy, scarcely five feet tall and flat as a boy, wore a dress of white dotted swiss trimmed with a Peter Pan collar and tied in the back with an old-fashioned perky sash. She had braided her hair, tied it with pink ribbons, and painted freckles across her nose.

  I had to admire Elena. She had certainly provided for every fantasy, from Kandi the prom queen to Renée the storybook whore. Even an exotic woman of mystery. Me.

  My musical plan for the evening was to intersperse Scott Joplin with old-timey whorehouse blues and, since the guests would have dates and so would I, a few romantic favorites: “These Foolish Things,” “As Time Goes By,” that sort of thing. But Scott Joplin first, to set a rollicking mood.

  Every light in the place was controlled by a dimmer, and Elena had set them low to produce a rosy glow. As I sat down at the piano stool, Renee walked by and made me think of the Place Pigalle, so I played “Milord” instead of “Maple Leaf Rag.” It upset my plan, but it was perfect guest-welcoming music.

  The FDOs and their dates arrived in breathless groups of twos and fours, practically shaking themselves like wet birds. They lost no time in handing their raingear to the genial hostesses and getting into the party spirit. I tried to give each new group what I believe is called a broad wink.