Rafael began his work shift carrying bottles of liquor to the bar and removing the empty ones, putting them in boxes so Melba could keep track and figure out which bartenders were stealing from her. She and Rafael always met before the end of the evening to analyze the drinking habits of the patrons and compare them with the bar receipts. It was usually Rafael who noticed that there were too many empty bottles and not enough cash.
About one in the morning Melba approached Rafael. “There’re a couple of guys at the back door asking for you, and they don’t look like altar boys. I already told you what I think about the way you dress. I also think you should do something about the company you keep.”
“Thanks, Melba. I’m real sorry they came during working hours. It won’t happen again.”
He went out the back door and closed it tightly behind him, making sure no one from the bar followed him. The only light in the alley was a single sixty-watt bulb surrounded by a cone-shaped protector, which pushed the light down and out, giving some illumination to the otherwise dark passageway.
Two Mexican men got out of a black ’55 Chevrolet sedan with tinted windows. The rear end was lowered and there was a single stripe of red painted on both sides of the car. The seats were upholstered with fake tiger skin, and there was a large crucifix hanging from the inside mirror.
“Órale pues,” said Rafael, “What are you vatos doing here at the place I work? I told you we do our business down in the Mission.”
“Listen man,” said the bigger of the two. He had a slight paunch and a black mustache. “We got to unload this piece of shit. It’s really hot, and the cops are after us,” he said nervously. He pulled a cigarette out of his black leather jacket and lit it by striking a match with his thumbnail and cupping his hands in the shadowy darkness of the alley. Then he looked around furtively to see if he could perceive any movement.
“That’s great, pendejo. So you lead them right up here to your old buddy, Rafael. That’s real smart. I told you I couldn’t get a buyer for that X-ray machine until next week, and I told you not to come up here looking for me. You guys are fucking with my livelihood, man.”
“Calm down, ese,” said the shorter one. “It was my idea. We can’t wait more than a day, and we wanted to give you one last chance.”
“I don’t know, man,” said Rafael, “I’ll have to see if they can get the money by then. Like I said, they told me it wouldn’t be until next week. That thing is as big as a house. “
“All right,” said the big one. “Call me before noon tomorrow or we’ll unload it to the next in line.”
“You didn’t come here because you like me,” said Rafael. “You must like the bread my people are willing to pay.”
Rafael went back inside as the black car crept down the alley with its lights still out. Those fuckers just don’t listen, he told himself, as he walked into the office where Melba was counting the day’s take with Excalibur lying at her feet.
“Like I’ve told you a thousand times, son,” Melba blurted out, “you’re gonna end up in trouble dealing with people like them.”
“Were you spying on me?”
“I don’t like your friends. I don’t want to see them around here. Got it?”
Rafael shook his head. He knew she was right, but he also had his own reality to deal with, and the world that he shared with Melba was only a small part of it. Before he left that evening, he went to the wastebasket, retrieved the net, and put it in his jacket pocket.
5
Blanche
WHENEVER he thought of Blanche, Melba’s daughter, Samuel felt romantic. In fact, he thought about her all the time but had to make an effort to suppress his sugary sentiments in public so that his knees wouldn’t buckle. He was also aware that his obsession was ridiculous: they were totally different. But in his eyes, Blanche wasn’t really a head taller than he was; instead, she was a slender reed whose freckles weren’t freckles but rather a golden halo. Her eyes, blue like her mother’s, were transparent lakes that he didn’t dare dive into for fear of drowning. In her presence he became withdrawn and speechless. For her part, Blanche always walked erectly, not at all ashamed of her height, which would have been a defect in another woman. She was a tomboy and a fanatic about sports. An expert skier, she sometimes spent two or three months of the winter at Squaw Valley as a ski instructor. In the spring and summer, she was into swimming and long-distance running, when she wasn’t mountain climbing. In the fall, she found other invigorating activities to help her burn energy.
Melba had lost hope that she would marry, like all the other girls her age, and give her grandchildren. Her daughter made fun of those television programs that portrayed perfect families of neatly groomed children, a hard-working father, and a mother who baked cakes and vacuumed wearing high heels and a string of pearls.
In spite of their differences, mother and daughter were very close. Blanche worked for free as Melba’s bookkeeper while she was studying to be a certified public accountant. Even in winter, she came down from Tahoe once a month to straighten out the bar’s accounts, pay the Board of Equalization and payroll taxes and, of course, make out the employee checks.
If Samuel learned she was going to be at the bar, he made sure to be there, too, even though she didn’t pay any attention to him. She was one of those few women who didn’t seem to care about the effect she had on men. Her indifference only aroused more passion in Samuel. He would wait patiently, nursing his Scotch on the rocks at the round table or watching her in the mirror behind the bar, while she pondered the business ledgers and chewed on the end of a pencil, periodically brushing aside a tuft of unruly hair. At times he would try to catch her attention with some banality because he could never come up with anything smart or sexy to say.
That day he thought he’d struck it rich. “Hi, Blanche, haven’t seen you in awhile. How’re things?”
“Hi, Samuel, you’ve been sitting there for three hours and you didn’t see me?”
“I’m thinking. I’ve got problems.”
“Don’t tell me about them now, I’m really busy.” Then she stopped what she was doing and took a closer look at him. “You’re pale. You look like a worm. You need some exercise. How about running with me this weekend?”
Surprised, Samuel weighed the horror of jogging against the possibility that he might never have another opportunity to be alone with her. “I’m not much good at that, but we could take a stroll in Golden Gate Park. How about that?” he stuttered.
“Okay, I’ll meet you at the windmill down by the beach at eight this Saturday. I’ll run and you can walk. We’ll get a bite to eat at Betty’s in the Haight. You know, that place right near Kezar Stadium?”
From the round table where she had installed herself with Excalibur, Melba observed the goings-on with curiosity. She had never said a word, but she was clearly amused by the mismatch and her daughter’s obliviousness to Samuel’s notso-disguised interest in her. As Blanche was leaving for the evening, Samuel followed her, trying to get another whiff of her pheromones. He’d heard on the radio that pheromones were responsible for sexual attraction, and he concluded, naturally, that Blanche’s were very powerful. He sighed, resigned to leave also, at the same time counting the hours before he would see her in the park on Saturday.
When he went past the round table, Melba grabbed him by the arm. “What can I do for you?” he said, acting surprised.
“Relax, Buster. Sit down and talk to us,” she said, smiling. “Excalibur was telling me that you two aren’t a bad couple,” she said as she motioned for Samuel to light her cigarette.
Samuel plopped down in the empty chair next to her with such a sullen expression that Melba started to laugh.
“Why don’t you ask her to do something less physically demanding than running?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Melba,” he mumbled, examining his fingernails.
“Knock off the shit, Samuel. You’re drooling over her.”
Samue
l turned red and was silent for a few seconds. “It’s that obvious, huh?”
“It’s not a bad thing, sweetie. You’re just going at it the wrong way.”
“What d’ya mean by that?”
“If you want to have anything to do with Blanche, it has to be in an area where you can compete. You’re no more fit to run a few yards than I am. In fact, it might kill you,” she said laughing, taking a deep drag off her cigarette. By that time, Samuel had also lit up, and he began to laugh, too. Now they both had a case of uncontrollable giggles until all the patrons left in the bar were staring at them.
“Kind of pathetic, isn’t it?” said Samuel.
“Yeah, pathetic, but that’s life,” she said in the middle of a coughing spell.
* * *
Samuel and Blanche met Saturday morning at the western end of Golden Gate Park near the Pacific Ocean at the Murphy windmill, one of the two huge Dutch windmills that looked as if they came right out of a Low Country’s picture postcard. They were big, imposing, and in some need of maintenance; their shingles had not been replaced since they started to fall off years before. But they served a purpose. They were used to obtain water for the irrigation of the park and several of its lakes. Quite a chore for the over-a-thousand-acre park, which was designed by the famous William Howard Hall in the 1870s to cover the unruly sand dunes and isolated vegetation, Blanche explained to Samuel.
“It was made into a modern marvel by John McLaren, who was in charge of it and who lived in the McLaren Lodge until his death at the age of ninety-six in 1943,” she added for Samuel’s benefit.
It was a typical cold day by the beach. The fog hadn’t lifted and the wind was blowing in toward the city, but the sand didn’t invade the park. It was kept out by the row of Cypress trees between the ocean and the windmills. The trees also told the story of the strength of the wind, as they were all bent heavily toward the east.
Blanche was dressed in sweats and tennis shoes, looking every inch the athlete, her hair pulled back with a rubber band. Samuel, on the other hand, had on loafers and his usual worn beige sports jacket with the cigarette-burn holes in the sleeves. He’d changed his appearance slightly by donning a Madras shirt, whose brown tones surprisingly blended with his jacket. It was his attempt to be casual.
“I thought it’d be nice to run through the park. There’s less traffic. You can trot along if you like; and since I’ll get there before you, I’ll do some shopping and meet you at Betty’s, let’s say ten o’clock,” Blanche proposed.
“That’s two hours from now. You think it will take me that long to get there?” asked Samuel, terrified.
“More or less. It’s okay. I’m not in a hurry today, and it‘ll be nice to talk with you.”
Samuel sighed. “What happens if I get there earlier?”
“That would be a stretch! But if you do, you can look for me on Haight. I’ll be the girl with the sweats on,” she said with a radiant smile. And she was off.
Samuel sat down on a rock by one of the dormant windmills and lit a cigarette while he mulled things over. Things hadn’t worked out the way he’d planned. Instead of spending a couple hours in Blanche’s sweet company, he would spend them running like an exhausted fugitive, alone. He stood up slowly, put out his cigarette, tried to wrap his thin sports jacket around his exposed torso to protect himself from the wind, and ambled south toward Lincoln Way at the southern edge of the park. He waited for a downtown bus, rubbing his hands together in an attempt to keep warm. When the 72 bus arrived, he hopped on and got off when it got to Stanyan Street, where the park ended. He had ridden east for the entire length of Golden Gate Park. He was now across the street from Kezar Stadium, just at the edge of the panhandle. It was bustling with activity as the groundskeepers prepared it for a Forty-Niners game the next day. He bought a paper, crossed over to the park, and sat down on a bench. The trip had taken twenty minutes. He was surrounded by a myriad of trees, some of which had no leaves, and there were spacious areas of lawn in between them and a children’s playground full of toddlers and their mothers, as it was a Saturday. The tots had on their bright jackets of different colors, with caps and mittens to match.
He sat there for more than a half hour before Blanche streaked past him almost in a trance; her blondish brown hair was damp with perspiration, her cheeks flushed, and her nose red, like a clown’s. He found her more beautiful than ever. Samuel thought she had the grace of a gazelle loping along on the African plain. Not that he’d ever been to Africa, or ever would be, but he liked the metaphor. He would find an opportunity to say it to Blanche, if he could summon up the courage.
When she reached the corner of Stanyan and Haight, she halted, waiting for the traffic light to change. She kept running in place but stopped long enough to touch her toes. He thought better of running over to greet her, as it would be embarrassing for him to explain his speedy arrival. It was better not to discuss it. When the light changed, Blanche trotted across the street and started to walk cheerfully down Haight Street, the Haight-Ashbury District’s main drag. It was then just another San Francisco neighborhood. The Hippies, who would transform it, hadn’t yet arrived.
Samuel waited until she passed Betty’s Diner. Then he got up and went there and sat in a booth looking out on the street through the plate-glass window. He smoked several cigarettes and was reading the paper, drinking his third cup of coffee, when he was startled by a “Boo!” and the tap on the shoulder. It was Blanche, full of smiles and energy.
“You must be a fast walker,” she commented.
“Nothing to it. Would you like something to eat?”
“Thank you. I’ll have a carrot and a glass of orange juice.”
Samuel called the waitress and gave her the order.
She smiled slightly. “We don’t serve carrots here.”
“Why not?” asked Blanche.
“Ask the owner.”
“Okay, I’ll have orange juice.”
“Anything else?”
“I’ll have another cup of coffee,” said Samuel.
They talked about this and that. Samuel felt that something had advanced between them, even though with Blanche he couldn’t be sure—she had the innocence and enthusiasm of a golden retriever.
6
Samuel Starts Digging
EVEN THOUGH Melba kept steering him in the right direction, Samuel took his own time to start his investigation into the death of Reginald Rockwood. She was right, he decided. Those tuxes were too expensive. He must have gotten a lot of money from somewhere. But where? As he pondered the problem and weighed his options, he concluded that a broke ad salesman didn’t have many.
Then he remembered Charles Perkins. He’d gone to Stanford with him before Samuel dropped out when he parents were murdered. Perkins was a fellow Midwesterner who now worked at the U.S. attorney’s office as a lawyer prosecuting federal crimes. Samuel helped him through a couple of very difficult literature courses in their second year, and he was sure Charles would remember the debt even after so many years.
He made an appointment and went to the lawyer’s office in the Federal Building on Seventh Street.
Charles met him at the door. He had yellowish skin and a head of limp hair the color of straw. He parted it on one side, but he always had a greasy clump in his eyes. His chiseled face gave the impression of amiability, but Samuel knew him well and knew that he had a petty soul. He was a nervous person with abrupt gestures and was incapable of being still. He had the bad habit of acting like a schoolteacher, pointing his index finger at everything and everybody. This mania always put Samuel on the defensive. Charles was surrounded by paper. Piles of it cluttered all the surfaces in his office, and it was almost impossible to find any vacant space anywhere in the room.
When Samuel saw him, he was reminded of what a critical and boring person he was in college. His immediate sense was that Charles hadn’t changed much. He had the same air of being an unkempt, petulant adolescent.
“What’
s up, Sam? You look like you’ve had a rough night,” Charles commented.
Samuel was surprised. Though he was his sloppy self, wearing his wrinkled outfit, he’d slept well the night before and felt fresh and focused. “I’m investigating the death of a socialite. It’s a strange case,” he admitted. “The dead guy owned five tuxedos but he lived in a closet at Engel’s, the engravers, where he did janitorial work. His death’s been called a suicide, but I’m not so sure it was.”
“You want the U.S. government to look into this?” asked Charles.
“Yeah. I think he had money hidden away,” said Samuel.
“Yeah, sure, that’s why he lived in a closet,” Charles laughed.
“No, no. Listen, I think he lived that way in an attempt to be inconspicuous,” said Samuel, wondering if he really wanted to subject himself to the grilling he was going to get from his pompous friend just to get him to look at some records.
“What kind of proof do you have for that?” asked Charles.
“He had expensive taste. Those tuxes cost a lot of money and his were of the best quality. If he could afford clothes like that, why would he live in a closet?”
“Maybe he was crazy.”
“I knew him well, and I can assure you he wasn’t crazy. “So your idea is he was getting his money illegally? Like he was blackmailing someone? Why would the federal government be interested in that?” asked Charles.
“I don’t know yet. But you’re the only person I know who has the power to look into this guy’s finances. If we find something and the feds aren’t involved, you can turn the whole case over to the district attorney, and you’ll look like a hero,” said Samuel.
“That’s a pretty slim thread, ol’ buddy. But I tell you what, I’m willing to give two days of my valuable time to this matter. Meet me here tomorrow at ten o’clock. Make sure you have a list of banks or other establishments where you think he could have hidden the money. I’ll help you trace it with the subpoena power of the federal government.”
The Chinese Jars Page 5
