Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

by Smith, Julie

  Nick, true to the professorial image, pulled a pipe from his pocket and began fiddling with it. “If she’s an attractive young woman, that could go a long way toward explaining it.”

  I said, “He seemed to like a lot of very different types of women.”

  “Oh?” said Nick. “They seemed all of a piece to me. Beautiful, intelligent, successful— thoroughly acceptable in every way.”

  “Acceptable seems a funny word to use. I mean, wouldn’t ‘desirable’ be more to the point?”

  Nick said to Rob: “Quick study, this lady.” Rob looked confused, and Nick turned back to me. “You got it, all right. He had women, but there was something passionless about it— like they were just so many appendages to his image.”

  “So you think he was an image-oriented man.”

  “Either that,” said Susie, “or he had something to hide— if only from himself.”

  “You thought he was gay?”

  “I’ve wondered. I can’t say I haven’t wondered. It’s funny— when he came to dinner here, he never brought anyone.”

  “Not even Adrienne?”

  “Adrienne? Who on earth is that?”

  Rob said, “His assistant. About twenty-two, looks like a punk rocker.”

  Nick exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke. “Come on! He wouldn’t be caught dead with someone like that.”

  “Well, she might have been the thing he had to hide. She was living with him, but she says they were just roomies. On the other hand, his friend Barry Dettman swears they were lovers.”

  “We never even heard of her!” Susie sounded put out.

  I said, “Jason was a man with secrets.”

  Nick took a few puffs. “When we first met he didn’t even want to say where he was from. Then later, I met his sister, who’d moved here from wherever it was— I’m still not sure— and found out coincidentally that that’s who she was. Jason had never even mentioned her.”

  “But here’s the question,” I said, “was he just a secretive kind of guy? Or did he really have something to hide?”

  “I got inklings of that,” said Nick. “That’s why I brought all this up. But they were only that. You know, some people really are just that way. It’s their nature.”

  “Darling,” said Susie, “do you think we ought to tell them…” She stopped there, waiting for him to make the connection.

  “About Tommy?” he said, and she nodded.

  “You two know who Tommy La Barre is?”

  “The guy who owns Dante’s?”

  The Rodenboms nodded.

  Rob whistled. “That’s big medicine.”

  It was. Dante’s was a well-known, fairly new, extremely popular San Francisco restaurant. Like some of the City’s oldest restaurants, it had private dining rooms upstairs. However, it had turned out that more than dining was happening there. A high-stakes poker game—very high stakes— occurred every Friday night. That was one thing. The other was the young ladies. Like the poker game, they were available only to certain clientele— but they were most certainly available. Or so the D.A. claimed. But the case was still pending, and somehow, Tommy was keeping his restaurant open.

  There had been so much publicity that whatever Tommy’s original story, if he hadn’t by now become a pimp and gambling host he was missing a great opportunity— anyone with money who wanted some action now knew where to go.

  “How does he fit in?” I asked.

  “He was a friend of Jason’s,” said Susie. “A close friend. Jason was fascinated with him, but then who wouldn’t be? I admit I am myself. We even begged Jase to let us take him to dinner at Dante’s, so we could meet him, but somehow he never got around to it.”

  She stopped and sighed. “When I’m done with the cats, I think I might do gentlemen thugs. What do you think?”

  But Rob and I were too riveted to answer.

  In the car he said, “You know, he’s got to be mob. Where there’s gambling and whores, there’s mob.”

  “And usually drugs. And where there’s drugs, there’s murder.”

  “He might not be mob. It’s such a small operation over there— maybe he’s just a weird dude with a yen to please his rich friends.”

  “And make a few bucks on the side. The exclusivity of the thing argues for that. Anyway, let’s put mob aside for a minute and just say Tommy thickens the plot pretty irresistibly. Jason had some kind of weird sex thing going, right?”

  “Not necessarily— he might have been gay. Or involved with Adrienne.”

  “Okay, let me rephrase. He was probably hiding something about sex.”

  “Granted.”

  “Well, La Barre was perfect. He could get Jason whatever he wanted— discreetly.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know— ladies who’d beat him or ladies who’d wear a dog collar and walk on a leash. Ladies who’d talk dirty or watch him beat off or let him watch them— whatever he was into.”

  “It certainly opens up a world of possibilities, but still. What was the motive? And here’s a tougher one. How would a guy like Tommy La Barre know Chris?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  The response was gratifying, but he nearly wrecked the car. What happened was, he turned to stare and forgot to watch the road. After we nearly got creamed by a taxi, and I nearly blew his eardrums out with a terrified screech, and he’d straightened the car out, and said, “don’t do that to me,” I told him what I knew. “He came to see Chris a few months ago—”

  “To get her to take the case!”

  “No. A little twist on it— to get her to do his divorce. A well-known feminist lawyer would be ideal, wouldn’t she? For something like that. For a guy with his reputation. Anyway, she slept on it, and that was what she decided he must be thinking, and she felt used. Also, she realized he made her feel like she was covered with motor oil.”

  “So she turned him down.”

  “Yes, and he yelled at her and insulted her. I guess it’s the sort of thing you pretty much forget the next day— she was just glad to have him out of her life— but if he was a pretty sick guy…”

  “Oh, man. This could be it.”

  Chapter Seven

  Chris was sure it was. Before Rob took me home, we dropped by her house and made her day. She covered her right eye with one hand, in the careless and, to me, supremely Southern gesture she made when she was overcome with amazement.

  “Oh my God. He said things like, ‘You can’t do this to me. Nobody shines Tommy La Barre on.’ Then he sort of did this slow, disgusted glance around and said, ‘Look at your office. You can’t afford to turn me down. This could have made your pathetic little career.’”

  “And I suppose he left, saying, ‘You’ll regret the day …’ or something like that.”

  “You know something? He did. The guy was slug spit, I’m telling you. And I don’t see how Jason McKendrick could have been a decent person either, if he was friends with him.”

  But I did. I had to agree with Susie Rodenbom on that one. A man like that was fascinating. The dangerous, the shady, the criminal, the other— even the evil—had a malign appeal; if kept at a distance, of course. Maybe Jason had gotten too close.

  I thought about that awhile— the other. And wondered why Roger DeCampo hadn’t been more fascinating. The answer was simple, I thought— because we were operating in two separate realities. You couldn’t make a connection with someone like that. Evil— if that’s what La Barre was— was part of all of us, something all too familiar that we never, never for any reason acknowledged in ourselves. And so we gave it so someone else— Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Nixon, whoever was in the neighborhood. You didn’t want to make a connection with it— you just wanted to reassure yourself it was out there instead of in here, and so you liked to get it where you could watch it. I’ve always been suspicious of people who get squeamish when you bring up violent crime— they don’t even want to think it’s out there, which is even scarier. With no evil in th
e world, surely they couldn’t do any. Such people must have unhappy spouses and children.

  “Uh, Rebecca,” said Rob. “Are you with us?”

  I’d been staring into space, quietly giving myself the willies.

  He said, “We have to get going.”

  “I want to talk to Chris,” I said, and turned to her. “Could you take me home in a bit?”

  “Sure. I need the company anyway— you two get to go out, but I don’t.” She meant to the wake. Under the circumstances, we’d thought, it was best if she didn’t go.

  Rob said, “Pick you up at eight?”

  When he’d gone, Chris said, “What’s wrong? You still mad at me?”

  “I’d say you were psychic, but you’re only half right. I wasn’t mad until I started thinking it over.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, I’m not sure I know who you are anymore. I mean, every time you make fun of Shirley MacLaine, you’re a hypocrite.”

  “I’ve never in my life made fun of Shirley MacLaine.”

  “You haven’t? Yes, you have— I’ve heard you do it.”

  “Uh-uh. You’ve seen me trying to titter politely when everyone else is doing it. Matter of fact”— she kicked at her coffee table with a sock-clad foot— “I hate it when people do that. There’s this kind of socially acceptable list of beliefs if you’re college educated and live on one of the coasts. I was at a dinner party the other night where someone said, ‘My ex-boyfriend just converted to Christianity, isn’t that disgusting?’ And nobody said a word. A couple of people just said, ‘Ohmigod,’ like it was the worst thing they could think of.”

  “I don’t get it. You’re not a Christian. Are you?” Who knew what she was anymore?

  “No, Rebecca, I am not a Christian. I have never been and I will never be a Christian, though I come from a family of devout Presbyterians. I can’t imagine having the least interest in a religion that denigrates both sex and women like Christianity does. But I am still an American, and I’m absolutely shocked at the way people go around attacking each other’s religions. If my ex-boyfriend converted to Christianity, I most assuredly wouldn’t feel free to call it disgusting in public. I think it’s a lot more disgusting that people think it’s perfectly okay to do that. Unless we’re talking Judaism or Zen, of course— if you attacked a Jew or a Zennie, you’d be anti-Semitic or narrow-minded, depending. Definitely not okay to attack the sacred cows. Those two are fine— and Catholicism because Catholics are pretty vocal and they’re a minority in a way. Episcopalianism because it’s so perfectly starched and therefore perceived as hardly a religion at all. Mennonites and Quakers are off the hook because they’re exotic; Unitarians because they’re so intellectual … and that’s about it. Forget it if you’re a Moslem or a Lutheran.”

  But I was barely listening. My heart was going like a car engine. My throat was closing. Was Chris anti-Semitic? I thought back to what she’d said: Judaism was a sacred cow. Wasn’t that an anti-Semitic remark? It couldn’t be, because Chris had said it— the same way psychics must exist because she was one. I had to think this over; I had to digest it. And right now I wanted answers about what I’d already thought over.

  “You’re as bad as anybody else. You said Roger DeCampo was crazy when all he did was say he had friends who’d seen ETs. And you go around hearing voices!”

  “I do not hear voices— that’s clairaudient, and I’m a classic clairvoyant. Roger Whizbang is clearly crazy because he’s obsessed— not because he thinks aliens exist.”

  “But you don’t know that. For all you know he had an experience like me— he went around all his life thinking there probably weren’t ETs, the same way I thought psychics were frauds— and then his best friend tells him he’s been kidnapped by little green men. What’s he supposed to do with that? I mean if a sane and rational person told him—”

  “Ohmigod!” She put her hand over her eye in that way she has. “You’re right. I am as bad as anybody else. I really am.” She sat quietly for a minute, and then she said, “Thank you for pointing that out.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I guess I am too.”

  “No. You stood up for the guy— I mean, you didn’t fall in love with him, but you didn’t condemn him as a maniac. And I guess I did.”

  “It isn’t that— it’s that I haven’t even read Shirley MacLaine. And I’ve probably spent hours making fun of her.”

  So we cleared the air a little— though I still had food for thought— and ended up with a great big sloppy hug. But I still went home feeling empty and isolated. It was nothing to do with Chris’s diatribe on religious intolerance— and the more I thought about it, I thought maybe she had a point— but everything to do with the loneliness I felt at learning I didn’t really know her.

  And it was only exacerbated by the way Rob and I had spent the day— pursuing Jason McKendrick’s secret. It was abundantly obvious he had at least one … more than one. Adrienne was a secret from the Rodenboms, and the fact that she was only his roommate was a secret from Barry Dettman— or else she was his lover and that was a secret from us.

  Did everyone have secrets? Did Rob? Did Julio?

  Did I?

  I thought about it. What were secrets about in our society? Sex, usually. We Americans were still as puritanical as the Pilgrims. If not sex, then what? Crime. That was a big one. Embezzling. Insider trading. Cheating on your income tax. Then there was money. Especially if crime was involved. What else? I had to admit Chris was right. Religion. “Weird” beliefs, meaning any that were different from— well she was right— from the sacred cows. If you wanted to practice law in this town, you’d better not be psychic. If you wanted to be considered intelligent and taken seriously, you probably shouldn’t get born again. But something nagged at me here— Chris was right about sex and women, too— Christianity did denigrate them. So how could an intelligent person be a Christian? I heard a little voice— did this mean I was psychic?— saying: How’s Judaism on those issues?

  No better, came the answer. And yet you could be intelligent if you were Jewish. What if you were something really outside the norm? Better keep it a secret.

  Other secrets I thought of: Addictions. Eating disorders. Health problems. These were the things you didn’t talk about— unless, in the case of the former two, you were in “recovery.” I realized that I had mentally put quotes around the word— denigrating someone else’s way of talking about his belief system, his life. Chris was so right— mocking was second nature. And the realization of it made me feel horribly isolated.

  Feeling grumpy and weird (was “weird” a judgmental, isolating word?), I stepped in the shower. Water is a great calmer.

  And yet, by the time I stepped out, I was more upset. Near panicked, in fact. Because in the course of my shower, I found a lump in my breast.

  I pushed the panic down. It couldn’t be there. I had felt a rib, that must be it. But I was too ragged to make sure right now— I’d do it in the morning. I made that a promise to myself: I’d check it first thing in the morning.

  Okay then, I had to get ready to go say good-bye to Jason McKendrick, someone I’d never even known. I wished I had time to play the piano— I knew that would lift me out of the doldrums. But I didn’t. I put some baroque music on the stereo and applied myself to the task of picking out something to wear. I had a new dress that would probably be perfect— ankle-length black crepe. But somehow I’d been meaning to wear it to something more cheerful. If I put it on now it would always make me sad— it would remind me of the day I knew I was going to have a mastectomy, that I was probably going to die…. The music obviously wasn’t working. Suddenly, I just wanted to get out of the house.

  I slipped on a pair of black pants, a gray silk blouse, and a tapestry vest. I hoped the effect was sober enough. My mood certainly was.

  I waited downstairs for Rob, something I’ve probably never done before, and found the air felt good, the velvet of the night did a lot to still the panic.r />
  Rob was five minutes early. “Am I late?”

  “Not at all. I was just restless.” He gave me a funny look, and on the short drive I was aware of his trying to start conversations and of my trying to participate, but I was so unfocused nothing ever really went anywhere.

  It was the only wake I’ve ever been to where there was valet parking. It was being held in a sort of dance hall whose proprietors had been friends of Jason’s. The whole idea, it seemed, was for every entertainer who’d ever known Jason to play a song or give a speech in his memory. A no-host bar was doing a good business, and people were milling, talking, only half listening to the earnest performers. It was an eerie scene, frankly. Because of the performances, the place was dark, yet it had the curious quality of a gathering where people had gone to be seen. Some people, anyhow— I saw the mayor there, and a couple of assemblymen.

  Everyone I knew from the Chronicle was there— and there were plenty; when Rob and I were dating, we’d been to lots of Chronicle parties together. And there were other people I recognized, from the society and entertainment pages, from television news. Genuine grief hung in the air along with the scent of celebrity. Jason had been a popular man— this shindig was invitational, though signs had been posted at the Chron and backstage at certain theaters. I found myself wishing I’d known him— a person so complicated he could live in filth and poverty and never, I gathered, invite anyone to his apartment, yet be so influential, so well liked that the city’s celestial beings turned out at his death.

  Rob went off to work the room, leaving me to do the same if I chose, and I did. It was the surest way of forgetting my own troubles and a golden opportunity as well. I went to get a glass of wine and found myself standing in line behind a man in a suit and a tie with a stain on it, a middle-aged man with a red, sad face and a voice that carried. He had buttonholed the woman in front of him, a stranger from the look on her face.