Trophies and Dead Things

by Marcia Muller

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “More or less.”

  “What kind of seminar was it?”

  “He didn’t say, and I couldn’t ask; he was getting really weird by that time. Then he started in on . . . well, what he said was, ‘You can beat yourself up for being unable to control the consequences of your actions.’ And other stuff along that line.”

  It sounded to me as if Hilderly had been trying to articulate the preachings of a pop psychologist to his son—and had not done too good a job of it. “Anything else?”

  “Well, there was some stuff about ideals. How you should hang on to them, but sometimes you had to dump some in order to live up to the most important of all. And then he got into guilt and atonement. All the time I was trying to eat my enchiladas, he was sucking up margaritas and carrying on like a born-again.”

  “Maybe he had gotten involved in some religion; there’s a lot of that going around.”

  Kurt looked dubious. His mother said, “I can’t imagine that. Perry was a lifelong atheist.”

  “What else did he say? I asked Kurt.

  “Not much that made any sense. It worried me; I’d never seen him that way before. Like Mom says, I wasn’t close to Perry, but he was a nice man, and I hated to see him sort of . . . losing it. You think maybe he was cracking up, and that was why he made that weird will?”

  ”Maybe.” I made a mental note to ask Hilderly’s former employer about the seminar he’d attended late in May.

  “Well, Kurt said, “whatever made him do it must have been really something. I know he loved my brother and me, even if he was sort of off on another planet most of the time.” Up to now Kurt had sounded almost cavalier about his last dinner with his father, but as he spoke a tremor came into his voice. He turned to his mother. “I wish I could have done or said something—you know, to let him know I cared.”

  Judy Fleming said, “Kurt, he knew you cared.”

  “But there should have been something. I’m sorry now that all those years I wasn’t a better son to him.”

  Quickly she went to him and put her arms around his shoulders. “You were a good son. You were the best you could be, under the circumstances.”

  She could easily have countered Kurt’s feeling of regret by pointing out that Perry hadn’t been much of a father, but instead she’d chosen the more difficult option of refusing to degrade her former husband’s memory. She may, as she’d said, have let Hilderly down when she divorced him, but now, at the end, she hadn’t failed him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  On the way back to the city I stopped at a K-Mart to buy a birthday card and a hanging fuchsia plant for Anne-Marie. By the time I reached the building she and Hank owned on Twenty-sixth Street in Noe Valley, it was close to ten and a refreshing fog once more enveloped San Francisco. I went up on the front porch, fuchsia dangling from my hand, and surveyed the row of hooks for plants that Anne-Marie had installed in front of the door to her first-floor flat; one was still vacant, and the space was the right size for my gift. I turned, nodding in satisfaction, but something across the street caught my attention. I looked back. There was no one over there, at least no one discernible, and all I heard were distant traffic noises and voices down the block.

  In a few seconds I turned away again, remembering the conversation I’d had with Hank on Saturday, when he’d described his paranoid feeling that someone might have been lurking around All Souls. “Nerves,” I’d said. “Typical urban ailment,” he’d said. Right on both counts. Quickly I went to the door of the upstairs flat and rang the bell.

  Anne-Marie and Hank are one of those couples who, once married, discovered they couldn’t live together. She’s fastidious, he’s just plain messy. She values a routine, he thrives on chaos. In the end they solved the problem by occupying separate flats in the same building—far enough apart, but never out of reach.

  The buzzer sounded, and I pushed the door open and climbed the narrow flight of stairs. The air was redolent of chili—an aroma that in the past would have made me cringe, because Hank’s secret recipe was one he should have carried untried to the grave. But the pervious winter Anne-Marie had critiqued it in a fit of anger, I had backed up her damning judgment, and since then Hank had made a concerted and moderately successful effort to improve it. Not that it mattered: nobody went to Hanks for the food. We went for the good talk and company.

  I hung my coat and bag on the hall tree and walked to the rear of the flat. Hank had reversed the typical order of the rooms, turning the front parlor into his bedroom and merging the remaining ones into a big space for entertaining that opened off the kitchen. It was back there that I found him and his three remaining dinner guests, scattered on the sectional sofa, coffee or wine in hand.

  Anne-Marie sat closest to the door. I went over and plunked the fuchsia and card on her lap. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you! I’m glad you could make it.” She examined the plant, then ripped open the envelope. Since I’d last seen her, she’d cut her long blond hair, and the pert new style enhanced the delicacy of her elegant nose and sculpted cheekbones. The haircut was the latest in a series of changes in her life, the most startling of which was taking an extended leave of absence from All Souls to act as consulting attorney to a large coalition of environmentalists. I wondered what had prompted the move, but so far had not found the right opportunity to ask.

  Anne-Marie laughed at the card—which likened our lives to the fast lane at the supermarket checkout—and passed it to Hank. He nodded in agreement and handed it to Rae, who sat on the other section of the sofa. Willie Whelan, dressed in his usual leather vest and western wear, sprawled next to her, his head lolling against her shoulder, I noticed there was something wrong with is face—it looked puffy. He raised a listless hand to me, then let it drop back onto the couch.

  Before I could ask what his problem was, Hank stood, insisting I come to the kitchen for some chili. I followed him out there, where a big pot of the stuff still simmered on the stove. While he dished it up I went to the cupboard for a wineglass and looked in the fridge, sighing when I found a mediocre brand of wine-in-a-box that Hank favors because of the convenience factor. As I pressed the rubber spigot and waited for my glass to fill, I said, “I need to discuss the Hilderly case with you.”

  “Now?”

  “Tomorrow morning will do.”

  “I’ll be in court until noon.”

  “Then I’ll catch you afterward—” I broke off as Rae entered the room.

  Looking at my assistant tonight, I had to admit that this new liaison with Willie was doing her wonders. Her round, freckled face glowed and her manner was relaxed and easy. When she’d come to work for me the previous year, she’d been a bundle of insecurities; shedding an immature and demanding husband, some therapy, and a new romantic relationship had made her blossom. She’d even begun dressing better—although her everyday wardrobe still ran to thrift-shop jeans and ratty sweaters. Tonight she had on a pair of corduroy slacks whose color exactly matched her auburn hair, and her shirt was a Liz Claiborne.

  She noticed my admiring glance and said, “Macy’s. I charged it. Willie has convinced me of the ease of living on credit.”

  “Just so long as he doesn’t convince you of the ease of going into bankruptcy, but, really, you look great!”

  “Thanks. Listen, I started those skip traces."

  “Hank said you have something on Heikkinen.”

  “Yes. I haven’t gotten a response from your friend at the DMV yet—she was swamped and their computer down for part of the day. But I went by Vital Statistics and came up with a marriage for Heikkinen—to a Glen A. Ross in nineteen seventy-eight. I passed the married name along to your friend, and she said she try to have the info by noon tomorrow.”

  “Good. Nothing on David Arlen Taylor?”

  “No. If the DMV files don’t show anything, do you want me to widen the search to Vital Statistics in other counties?”

  “Yes.
Try Alameda, Marin, Contra Costs, and San Mateo for openers. I know that’ll mean a lot of travel time, but I’ll cover the office.”

  “I don’t think you’ll need to, much. My desk is clear, and we seem to be in a slow period. You may have to cover for me with Willie, though.”

  Hank handed me a bowl of chili and grinned evilly—because it was extra hot, or because of what Rae had just said, I couldn’t tell. “What does that mean? What’s wrong with Willie, anyway? He looks funny.”

  Now Rae grinned, too. “Willie had all four wisdom teeth pulled this morning. He called me every hour on the hour all day to whine, and I suspect he’ll do the same tomorrow. He’s not talking much tonight, though; he couldn’t eat his dinner, so he drank it.”

  “Does that mean he’s too sedated to do his renditions of the latest Jewelry Mart commercials?”

  “You got it.”

  “Thank God.” Willie gets a bit frenetic on the subject of his television stardom, and has frequently been known to reenact his commercials for captive audiences.

  We went back to the living room and I took up my favorite position on the floor by the coffee table, bowl of chili (Hank had done something unfortunate to it—too much Tabasco, I thought) and glass of wine in front of me. I noticed an empty espresso cup to one side, recalled that Jack Stuart, our specialist in criminal law, as a fan of the vile brew, and asked, “Why’d Jack leave so early?”

  Hank said, “He had to go to the Hall of Justice. That Iranian client of his got arrested again, shot at a kid who he claims was trying to steal beer from his store. Fortunately he missed.”

  “Poor Jack. But what about Ted? Didn’t you say he was coming?”

  All four faces clouded. Anne-Marie said, “Ted couldn’t make it. His friend Harry died.”

  “Oh, no.” I set down my spoon, with little appetite I’d had completely gone. Harry had been our secretary’s childhood friend; like Ted, he’d been gay, and he’d died of AIDS. As always when confronted with the horror of the disease, I felt overwhelmed with helplessness and anger. “How’s Ted handling it?”

  Rae said, “I had a drink with him right after he got the news this afternoon. He’s bearing up all right; it wasn’t as if it was unexpected. But still . . . You know what he told me? He said he felt disconnected, that Harry’s dying was the first major break with his youth. He said it made him feel like he was straddling the gap between the beginning and the end of his life.”

  “I know what he means,” Hank said. “This client of mine, the one whose heirs Shar’s trying to locate, makes me feel that way. Perry wasn’t that close a friend, but he was a symbol of an era to me.”

  “Like Abbie Hoffman,” Anne-Marie added. “I couldn’t believe it when he killed himself. The clown prince of the student revolution, ending up dead in middle age of booze and antidepression drugs. When I heard about Abbie, I knew the sixties were dead, too.”

  Willie mumbled wistfully, “I missed the sixties, was in “Nam trying to stay alive. Missed the seventies, too, trying to stay out of jail. Come to think of it, I might of missed the eighties.”

  Rae said, “I did too—the sixties, I mean. Unless being born then counts. Those must have been the days, huh?”

  Hank shrugged. “They were, if you judge from all the nostalgia that’s being wallowed in lately. They had a reunion of aging militants at Stanford last May. All the folks who sat in at the Applied Electronics Lab in nineteen sixty-nine got together to talk over old times with current campus radicals.”

  “My God!” I said. “Did you go?”

  “Are you kidding? In nineteen sixty-nine—because I’d stupidly joined ROTC, thinking the war would be over before I graduated—I was sitting around with Willie in an army supply depot in Cam Ranh Bay. Besides, even if I’d been in on the protests, the idea of sipping white wine and nibbling on crudités with a bunch of affluent people worried about wrinkles and hair loss turns my stomach.”

  “What are you ideals?”

  “Oh, they’re still around someplace. Trouble is, half of the time I can’t keep track of what I’m supposed to believe these days.”

  “Yeah, it’s tough for an aging leftist to remain politically correct,” Anne-Marie said.

  “We were in Bell Market looking at the grapes, and this asshole who thinks he’s the social conscience of Noe Valley sidled up to her and warned her that grapes are still on the boycott list. She couldn’t remember whether it was just Thompson seedless or all grapes, and was too embarrassed to ask, so we didn’t buy any. But about an hour later I saw her slinking out of the house to go to that little produce stand two blocks away.”

  “I wanted grapes.”

  “Yeah—but that guy’s produce isn’t even organic.”

  “And organic, “Rae said, “is always correct. As is oat bran, anything made out of soybeans, recycling, and taking public transit.”

  “Great, “Hank said. “Just when I finally bought a decent car. I guess I’m politically hopeless: until three months ago I was still calling Asians, ‘Orientals.’ I was corrected by a high-school girl, for Christ’s sake. I’ve now got that one licked, but I still slip up on calling blacks ‘African-Americans.’ ”

  Anne-Marie said, “High-school woman.”

  “Huh?”

  “Woman, not girl.”

  “Jesus!”

  The subject of the conversation was beginning to irritate me, as trendy things—whether on the left or the right of the political spectrum—tend to do. “You know what all of this is?” I asked. “Just trappings. People are finally emerging from the selfishness of the Reagan era, and they want to act socially responsible again, but they don’t know how to go about it. And you know what else I think? I think a lot of the people who are into being politically correct are the same ones who took up jogging and Cajun cooking and BMW’s with a vengeance. It’s something to do, and it makes them feel less guilty about having money.”

  Willie said, “Nice rant, McCone.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rae said, “Well, wasn’t it just trappings back in the sixties, too? No, I guess not. The sixties were about peace and love and freedom—”

  I interrupted her. “What the sixties were about was rage.”

  She stared at me, her expression shocked.

  “Think about it,” I told her. “SDS was formed because the students were enraged by what their elders were doing to the world, and particularly by the war in Asia. The Weatherman bombings: Rage because the revolution hadn’t come off as they hoped. You probably think of the Beatles as an upbeat symbol of the sixties, but have you ever really listened to the lyrics of songs like, ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ or ‘Piggies’? Sheer rage at the establishment.”

  Hank said. “Shar’s right. Our generation was raised to expect the good life. And then what did we get? The threat of annihilation by nuclear weapons. The assassinations of the Kennedy’s and King. An undeclared war whose origins were so complex that most of us had to take a history course to understand them. And it was us who were being drafted to fight it, while our elders feathered their nests with the proceeds of defense contracts. No wonder people were pissed.”

  Rae frowned, unwilling to give up her illusions. “But what about the Summer of Love? The hippies?”

  “They were pissed too. What better way to get back at the Establishment than by growing hair down to your ass, dropping acid, and going to live in a commune?”

  She was silent, her romantic visions shattered. I felt a little sorry for her.

  Apparently Hank did too, because he said, “You know, I think I have a copy of the Beatles’ White Album around here someplace. Let’s listen to it one last time. And then let’s kiss the sixties goodbye. Frankly, I’m kind of sick of them.”

  He rooted through a big stack of LP’s and put the two-record album on the stereo. It was scratched and tinny-sounding, but nostalgically familiar. For a while time rolled back for me, to the days of Rocky Racoon, Sexy Sadie, and Bungalow Bill. And to “Helter Sk
elter,” the song that had fueled Charles Manson’s twisted imagination. When I finally heard the weirdly atonal strains of “Revolution 9.” I thought, Yes, that’s what it was all about—rage.

  I looked up. Hank was watching me, reading my expression. He nodded in agreement, and I knew he was also wondering what that rage might have done to Perry Hilderly.

  As soon as the record ended, Rae announced that she and Willie had better be going. He’d fallen asleep with his head on her lap five or six songs before, and she had to shake him awake. They thanked Hank and went down the stairs, Willie leaning heavily on her.