“Does my brother know you’re over here?”
“He told me to investigate Tina’s murder,” I said, “but he didn’t tell me how. I’m one of those self-starters you hear about.”
He didn’t like that. It came too close to wise-guyism to suit him, and he frowned again. He was a good frowner.
“So I’m your number-one suspect, eh?” he said. That brought out a small, wrinkled smile, and I began to like him a little. But only a little.
“If you weren’t a possible suspect,” I said, “you wouldn’t have wanted to try to find out who killed Tina and eliminate you as a suspect. When Lehman told me just how it was, I volunteered to come back.”
“You wanted to help me,” he said.
“I wanted to help myself. The way Lehman told it, unless I came back willingly and tried to bail you out, you and The Brother were going to get nasty about me shooting your cousin.”
“If that’s what Lehman said, there must be some truth in it,” Kolchik said. He smiled again. “So that’s what they call Bruno, eh? The Brother.”
“That’s what I call him. I’ve heard him called worse.”
“A lot of people have the wrong slant on Bruno,” he said. “He’s a bit rough, perhaps, but he’s got one great quality that makes up for everything. He’s loyal.”
“Loyal to what?”
“To me, Goodey. To me,” Kolchik said complacently. “What are you loyal to?”
Before I could answer, he moved over to the driftwood table and took up the small bell. He gave it a few brisk shakes, and almost immediately a short, ugly girl with a Little Nemo haircut came out onto the terrace with an expectant look on her face. She was wearing a mauve slack suit with a small apron which seemed to turn it into a uniform. She ignored me and turned her face to Kolchik as if he were the sun.
“Let’s have a drink, Goodey,” he said. “I make some very good beer. Irina, will you please bring us a bottle of the homemade beer from the cellar?”
She moved back into the house with a slightly pigeon-toed walk, and Kolchik gestured toward the deck chairs. “Let’s sit down and enjoy the sun,” he said. “It’s one of God’s great gifts. Now, you were about to tell me what you’re loyal to. Or maybe to whom.” The “to whom” came right out of Business English 1A (night school division), but he got it out without falling flat on his face.
I didn’t have to think very hard. “To me,” I said.
I could see that he thought this was a bit crass. It offended his Polish-American sense of respect for family, nation, and institutions.
“Not to the police force?” he asked with raised eyebrows. He meant, “Not to me?”
“I’m not on the police force anymore,” I said. “You had me kicked off.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, shrugging as if he’d forgotten to pay the milkman or some other small oversight. “But you’ll be back on the police force, won’t you, after you clear up this…other matter?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But about this other matter—”
But he wasn’t listening. He was looking past me at the sliding door into the house, and I turned to follow his eyes. Coming onto the terrace was a woman in a shiny, chromium-plated wheelchair which she was propelling with thin, muscular arms. On a tray over her lap was a pitcher of beer with a thick head of foam and two tall pilsner glasses. She maneuvered the wheelchair with the expertise of long practice.
Everything about the woman was gray, and she fought the somber shade by wearing a vividly flowered red dress and a shocking shade of carmine lipstick. Her tapered nails were drops of fresh blood. But behind this show of color, she was like a vampire’s victim, drained of all but the dregs of life and fighting every inch of the way. Behind her dull silver skin, veins like very minor roads on a map seemed to be fading out before my eyes.
Kolchik was up from the sun lounger and behind her chair with the agility of a man half his age. Reluctantly she stopped propelling the chair and allowed herself to be pushed.
“This is my wife,” Kolchik said proudly, wheeling her between our two loungers. “Dear, this is Joe Goodey. He’s a detective looking into the murder of Tina D’Oro.”
I jumped up feeling faintly guilty. “I could come back at a more convenient time,” I said, “if—”
“No, Mr. Goodey,” she said, giving me a cold, dry hand, “there won’t be a more convenient time. This is fine.” She paused briefly. “Aren’t you the detective who shot Sanford’s cousin? What extremely bad luck!”
I didn’t know if she meant that I or old Stanislaus had had the bad luck, but I nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid I’m the one.”
“Have you been to see him at the hospital yet?”
“No,” I said. “Things have been a little hectic since then, and I haven’t had a chance. I don’t think I’d be very welcome anyway.”
“Of course you would,” she said sternly, looking up at my face with once-indigo eyes glazed with a gray sheen. “Cousin Stanislaus will be wondering what sort of man shot him.”
“I’ll try to get to see him soon,” I promised.
The mayor had poured out two perfect glasses of beer and was holding one out toward me. “Drink this,” he said, “and you’ll never drink commercial beer again. It’s a recipe my grandfather stole from the bishop of Cracow.”
It just tasted like beer to me, but I tried to look like a man drinking the best beer he’d ever experienced. I don’t think I succeeded, but Kolchik swallowed his disappointment and the rest of his glass of beer and immediately poured himself another. Not to be outdone, I chug-a-lugged the rest of mine and held out my glass. Hizzoner brightened considerably, and I could tell that we were well on the way to being best buddies.
But how do you raise such a delicate matter as the late Tina D’Oro with even a best buddy with his crippled wife sitting there admiring his bobbing Adam’s apple as he drank beer?
“Mayor,” I said, “the matter I came to see you about is a rather delicate one. I think we’d better talk privately.”
“That won’t be necessary, Goodey,” he answered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and missing a bit of foam. “Mrs. Kolchik knew all about Tina. I have no secrets from her. So go right ahead.”
I still hesitated. I’m as modem and sophisticated as the next man, but I’m still young enough to think that there’s something unwholesome about swinging geriatric cases. But then, maybe Kolchik didn’t see himself that way.
“That’s right, Officer,” said Mrs. Kolchik, smiling up at me. “I knew about Tina. You see, it’s been many years since my health has been good enough to allow me to be a complete wife to Sanford.” She didn’t have to hit me over the head with a bread board. I knew what she was getting at. “And,” she went on, “Sanford is still a youthful and vigorous man. So we decided years ago that it would be best if he were free to seek the company of younger, stronger women. It was my idea. You see, Mr. Goodey, I am a European woman, really. I hope I am not embarrassing you.”
“Oh, no,” I lied. I’d really have preferred not to be let in on the family secrets, but it looked as if I already was. “But I hope you’ll excuse me if I’m just as frank.”
“Of course,” they said together, all smiles.
“Well, then, Mayor,” I said, “with the number of girls in San Francisco available to a man in your position, how could you have been stupid enough to choose one like Tina in a situation as public, if not more public, than your own?”
I thought that would shake him up. But he didn’t seem to mind a bit, just smiled boyishly, looked fondly at Mrs. K., and said: “Tina reminded me of Maria when she was younger.”
Christ, another complication. Who’s this Maria, and how does she fit in? Then it came to me: Maria was Mrs. Kolchik. I don’t know why it occurred to me, other than the expression on Kolchik’s face. She looked about as much like Tina as I did. Trying not to be too obvious, I searched Mrs. K.’s ravaged face and body for any faint resemblance to Tina’s plastic lushness. I suppos
e my face showed it.
“I was not always a cripple, Mr. Goodey,” Mrs. Kolchik said softly, and I felt ashamed of myself. “However, I must say that I never looked anything like Tina D’Oro. I fear it was just Sanford’s imagination. But I found it flattering, I admit.”
“You were far more beautiful than Tina, Maria,” said Kolchik with a great deal of enthusiasm. But then he remembered that he was talking of a girl who had only recently and violently died, and he crossed himself.
“You were asking questions, Goodey,” he said, bringing things back into official tracks. “What else do you want to know?”
“When did you last see Tina?” I asked.
“Tuesday afternoon,” he said quickly, “between two thirty-five and four o’clock.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about her? Did she seem depressed or worried about anything? Would she have told you if she had been?”
“No, to the first two questions,” he said. “And I doubt it very much, to the third. Tina didn’t seem any different than usual.”
“And how was that?” I wondered how a bimbo like Tina appeared to a big man like Kolchik.
“Simple, happy, uncomplicated, uncomplaining,” he said. “A very relaxing girl to be with. Of course, she was vain, obsessed with herself, her body, her career. Tina had the idea that wiggling about to loud music was some kind of art form. No, more than that—a power for positive good in the world. I believe she thought she was making a personal contribution to world peace and general enlightenment.”
“Did Tina tell you much about herself?” I asked. “About her past, I mean—where she came from, what she did before she became a big topless star.”
He shook his head. “No, I asked her to tell me about her life, but she was always very vague. She didn’t want to talk about that. She did say once that she came from someplace over in the East Bay, but that’s all. Tina wasn’t interested in the past. The past was dead and buried as far as she was concerned. She knew only one direction—ahead. Upward and onward, that was Tina, and she was in a terrible hurry to get there.”
“To get where?” I asked.
“To the top,” Kolchik said. “The movies, Las Vegas, Broadway. You name it, Tina was going to get there and be bigger and better than any of them. The Jungle was just a phase. She had her foot out for the next rung on the ladder, but I don’t think she knew where or what it was. But she knew the direction she was going.”
“Mr. Kolchik,” I said, “did you know before Tina was killed that she kept a diary and that you were in it?”
“No,” he said, “I had no idea. I do know that she seemed to understand the need for discretion, that it couldn’t be publicly known that we were—friends. I never asked her if she was writing anything down.”
I had more questions I didn’t like to raise with my new buddy, Sandy, but I had to.
“Mayor,” I said, “was Tina or anybody else blackmailing you about your relationship with her?”
“No!” he said positively. “Nobody.”
“Do you know if she told anybody about you and her? Anybody at all?”
He thought deeply for a few moments. “She could have,” he said, “but I don’t know that she did. It may sound odd, but I didn’t know Tina very well. I don’t even know who her friends were or if she had any. Ours was a very—limited friendship, you see.”
I did see, if he was telling the truth. I plunged on. “And your— friendship, Mayor,” I asked, “how had it been going lately? Had you had any arguments, fights, disagreements of any kind?”
He seemed honestly puzzled. “No,” he said, “nothing like that. It really wasn’t that sort of relationship.”
“Well, was the nature of your relationship changing or on the verge of changing? I mean, if I’m not being too personal, were you tired of her? Did her attitude toward you seem any different? Or were things just going along smoothly?”
“To tell the truth, Goodey,” he said, “I was giving some thought to—to seeing Tina less often. After all, with the election coming up—” The rest of the sentence faded in the fresh morning air.
“Did Tina know that? Did she object?”
“She didn’t even know, Goodey,” he said. “I hardly knew it myself. I hadn’t really made up my mind yet.”
If Kolchik was the guilty party, he was going to be a hard man to trap. He seemed too damned honest. “One last question, Mayor,” I said, getting up from the sun lounger. “Can you prove where you were at the time Tina was murdered?”
“No,” he said. “At about three in the morning on Thursday I was asleep here—alone.”
“We have separate bedrooms, Mr. Goodey,” said Mrs. Kolchik, who had been listening closely to our exchange.
“So,” said the mayor, “you can see that I have no ironclad alibi. You’ll just have to go on suspecting me.”
“I’ll do that,” I said and began to make well-I’m-leaving noises. The late-morning sun beating down on this terrace was very pleasant, but it wasn’t getting me any closer to where I wanted to be. Mrs. K. said good-by with a ruined smile, and the mayor walked me to the door, where Stoney Karras waited with a face like a garbage man making a pickup. Kolchik waved him away and offered me the big hand he’d forgotten when I’d arrived.
“Good-by,” he said. “I hope you’re successful in your search—and soon.”
“Me too,” I said, taking back my hand and turning to walk back to my car.
“Goodey,” he said, and I stopped and turned back toward him, “do you really think it’s possible that I killed Tina?”
“It’s possible,” I said. No use letting him get complacent. “I haven’t heard anything yet which rules it out.”
“Good,” he said to my surprise. “You keep on suspecting everybody, and you’ll end up getting the right person. Maybe you’re a better detective than we all thought.”
“Maybe.” I turned again to go.
“Goodey,” he said.
This was getting monotonous. I was beginning to feel like one of those little shooting-gallery rabbits that turns sharply at the end of each row and repeats his path.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t waste any time.”
I answered that one with a meaningless look and walked through the doorway to the back of the house. Stoney was waiting for me. He didn’t look friendly.
“I’ll see you off,” he said.
“Don’t strain yourself.”
“It’s no strain. It’s a pleasure.”
As I got in my car, Stoney said, “I don’t like ex-cops.”
I backed up and got the right slant to the road before I answered. “Neither do I,” I said, driving close enough to make him back up against the white-painted wall. That wouldn’t do his suit any good. In the mirror he didn’t look happy.
12
St. Timothy’s was a tall, crooked, hip little church in the shadow of Coit Tower. It was the kind of church that held rock masses and nudist baptisms. The curate was a weedy little West Point dropout who was on record calling Cardinal McGinty a “tired, old, worn-out, neo-Fascist prick.” It was that kind of church, and the waiting list to get married there was as long as a bookie’s memory.
It was still half an hour before Tina’s memorial service, but the block in front of St. Timothy’s looked like the closing scene of Day of the Locust. You couldn’t have cast that crowd at Twentieth Century Fox. You name it: hippies, Chinese pimps, spade socialites, the dregs of Nob Hill’s rearguard bacchants, the Broadway cognoscenti—they were all there, milling around for the benefit of the television cameras and the nine o’clock news. The tall, oak double doors of St Timothy’s were still closed.
From their windows the natives looked down on the throngers in third-generation Italian wonder and occasionally threw down something that wasn’t too heavy or too valuable. An old buddy of mine, Sgt. Jack Sweet, the uncrowned king of North Beach, was jostling about in the crowd, using a bit of muscle on the more obvious pickpockets, rubbing up agai
nst the prettier girls, trying to nip mayhem in the bud, and enjoying every minute of it. Better him than me.
I stashed my car safely around the corner and edged up to the mob gingerly. If Tina’s murderer had been standing in the middle of that crowd with a confession pinned to his chest, I don’t think I’d have gone in after him. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder in an authoritative manner. He didn’t quite knock me down.
Rather than risk another attack, I turned around and found Bert Coney, newspaper columnist, celebrity maker, and claimant to the title of “Mr. San Francisco.” He was looking at me as if he owned me and the square mile I was standing on.
“You’re Joe Goodey,” he told me in a way that made me want to believe him. Coney carried his round little head at about fifteen degrees off vertical, and his very expensive toupee seemed to be holding on for dear life. He had weary little eyes, resting comfortably in nests of wrinkles, and a face that had been introduced to many an expensive bottle of wine.
I didn’t deny the accusation, so he went on: “You knew Tina, didn’t you? Maybe you’ve got an angle for my column tomorrow. They’re crying for my copy down at the office, and all I can get from this crowd of scum is ‘so young, so beautiful’ crap. I can’t use that.”
“I didn’t know her all that well,” I said, still casing the crowd over the top of his head.
“Then what are you doing here?” he asked. “Kolchik didn’t take you back on the force, did he?” An idea seemed to glow at the back of his dull eyes. “Say, you didn’t lay her, did you? I wonder how many guys here today laid Tina D’Oro? That’s an angle.”
I didn’t argue with him. “No, I didn’t lay her,” I said, “but it might not be too late. I understand it’s going to be open coffin.” That took even Coney by surprise. He stopped searching the mob for Tina’s ex-lovers and looked at me with new interest.
“Now, that,” he said, “is really sick.” He wasn’t being critical, just remarking on a new discovery, like peanut-butter yogurt. “You cops are a hard lot. Tina’s body is hardly cold yet, and…”
The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels Page 9
