Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

by Marcia Muller

  “Again?”

  “Like I said, it’s not that original a story. Happened the same way to me. Did you know I was captain of a passenger liner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Matson Lines. Wonderful ships in their day, sailed the Pacific routes. As captain, I could bring my wife aboard. At first I did, but my jealousy …” He set his empty glass on the console, spread his hands before him and stared at their age-swollen joints as if he wondered how they’d gotten that way. “My wife was a very beautiful woman, much younger than I. I couldn’t stand the way other men, both passengers and crew, looked at her. Finally I told her it wasn’t working out, her coming to sea with me, and made her stay at our apartment in North Beach while I was on my voyages. I left her alone far too much.”

  “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t control my jealousy on land, either. Every time I returned home I’d accuse her—falsely, I now know—of having affairs. Finally she couldn’t bear any more accusations, and she left me. I told your friend my story, asked him to try again with his wife.”

  “So T.J. had accused Anna of sleeping around?”

  “No.” Cap shook his head. “It had to do with the drugs. …”

  It happened in Monora, Suits had told Cap, on a stifling July night. Heat lightning had been dancing on the Monongahela for hours, and he couldn’t sleep. As was his habit, he slipped out of the now-defunct motel where he and Anna and his people were staying and prowled the town—along the main street, up and down the side streets, and finally to the railroad embankment by the river. He hadn’t noticed the dirt track under the trestle before, so he followed it. Stopped when he heard voices on the beach. Peered out at the park.

  And saw Josh Haddon making a drug buy.

  Cap said, “Your friend was certain his pilot was buying cocaine for his wife. He knew she was hooked again. At least he thought he knew that. Anna’s drugs were to T.J. what my wife’s secret lovers were to me.”

  Suits didn’t confront Josh. Instead he rushed back to the motel and confronted a sleepy Anna. She denied his accusations, tempers flared, a violent argument ensued. And in the morning she was on the corporate jet with Josh, bound for home and the beginning of a four-year separation from Suits.

  I said to Cap, “I can’t understand how he could have had so little faith in her. She’d been drug-free for years. She’d graduated from college—”

  “He realized his error later, when he found out that the cocaine was meant for an entirely different purpose. But the damage was done; your friend’s wife would have nothing to do with him for years.”

  “I still don’t understand why he’d think that the drugs Josh Haddon was buying were for Anna.”

  “Haddon? Is that the pilot? Well, to get back to your question, I suppose it was the nature of the relationship.”

  “How so?”

  “He would’ve done anything for her.”

  Noah Romanchek had used the identical words—practically his dying words—but he’d been speaking of what happened in Lost Hope.

  “Odd way of showing it, accusing her of being hooked again—”

  “No, I don’t mean your friend; I mean his pilot. Your friend claims his wife never really loved Haddon, but Haddon never stopped loving her.”

  I closed my eyes, taking it all in. Understanding, finally, what Romanchek had been trying to tell me.

  Josh: the chameleonlike man in Suits’s organization, who heard through his pilot’s headset every detail that Suits and his associates discussed while conducting business in the air.

  Josh: who banked the large salary that Suits paid him; who obeyed orders like a good little soldier and did Suits’s dirty work; who had brooded dangerously ever since Suits banished him from the dope farm and took away his woman.

  Who would have been in a better position to bring his boss down?

  Twenty-three

  Josh Haddon drove a gold Trans Am, the doorman said.

  Low-slung, pale in color: my first real piece of evidence against him.

  “Is he up there now?” I asked.

  The doorman hesitated; probably Sue Mahoney had cautioned him against talking with me. Then he shrugged, perhaps remembering the shot of good scotch I’d bought him at his neighborhood tavern back in August. “He left around fifteen minutes ago.”

  “On foot?”

  “No, he parks back on Steuart Street. Mahoney keeps ‘forgetting’ to have a garage key card made for him; she thinks he’s not classy enough for Bay Vista, but Gordon’s company owns the penthouse and their L.A. office okayed him staying there, so there’s not a damned thing she can do about it.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember Haddon’s license-plate number?”

  He grinned. “Just the letters—SHT. How that one got by the censors, I don’t know. I kidded Haddon about it once, and he said ‘SHT happens.’”

  I laughed, more to keep the doorman on my side than because I found the remark amusing. “Tell me, when Gordon was still living here and Haddon would pick him up in the helicopter, did he have anything to do with Sid Blessing?”

  “Sure. The two of them hit it off; they’re both ex-army types, although Haddon was ’Nam and Blessing did a stint in the Gulf. If Haddon was waiting around for Gordon when Blessing took his break, they’d go up on the roof, sit in the chopper, smoke, and gas about the good old days. To hear them, you’d’ve thought those were the best times of their lives.”

  “I guess for some people they were.”

  But for Josh the real best times had been at the dope farm, before he lost Anna. I pictured him—amiable and laid-back on the surface, with all that rage simmering just below—trading war stories with Blessing until he was sure of him. And Blessing, the former explosives expert who was into smalltime scams, must have leaped at the chance to grab on to the money Josh eventually offered him. To a man like Blessing, it would have seemed like big money, while to Josh it was just savings for which he had no use.

  The doorman was still shaking his head, trying to figure out how wartime could be the high point of someone’s life. I took out my card, circled the car-phone number. “If Haddon comes back, don’t tell him I’m looking for him. And if you call me at this number, it’ll be worth a couple of shots of scotch at the Wishing Well.”

  * * *

  So where would Josh Haddon go at close to nine o’clock on a Monday night? I sat in the MG, trying to put myself in the pilot’s place, reviewing his options. If he’d followed me to the airport last night, he probably thought I’d gone out of town, and the anonymous calls to my office would have reinforced that. But I’d phoned him that afternoon to get Gerry Butler’s number. Would he have assumed I was calling long distance, or would he have checked to see if I’d come back?

  I headed for my own neighborhood.

  The block-long tail end of Church Street was quiet, my house dark. I pulled across the Curleys’ driveway next door and surveyed the cars parked along the curbs. No gold Trans Am with an SHT license plate. I peered at the shadows surrounding my earthquake cottage. No strange shapes, and nothing moved except for a cat-sized form that was probably Ralph or Allie.

  Suddenly a bittersweet longing swept over me. I wanted to be inside that house, curled up on the couch with a good book, a cat on either side of me and a glass of wine to hand. And at the same time I wanted to be exactly where I was—behind the wheel of the MG, primed for action. My life had been a series of such contradictions, the two sides of my personality pushing and pulling at each other. Finally I’d come to terms with the struggle, realized that the side that was drawn to excitement and danger would always win.

  Next stop, Bernal Heights.

  No Trans Am near the weedy little park that divided the street in front of All Souls. No Trans Am on any of the side streets, either. Again I idled across a driveway watching deceptively moving shadows. Saw nothing. And got moving again.

  Quick check of Steuart Street. He hadn’t returned to where he usually parked. Quick prow
l through the South Beach area—trendy nightspots, condo and apartment complexes, bayside promenade, pierside diners. Miranda’s was still open, and through its window I glimpsed Carmen holding court in a corner booth. Slowed, thinking one of the people might be Josh, but they were all strangers.

  Where, dammit? Where?

  And where was Suits?

  I idled near the China Basin drawbridge, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. The phone buzzed, and I started. The doorman, calling to say Josh had returned to Bay Vista? I snatched up the receiver. No reply to my hello, and then someone hung up. Wrong number? Or Josh trying to locate me?

  Paranoid, McCone. As paranoid as Suits was when he—

  Of course! How could I have forgotten? He’d started recording all his phone calls sometime last summer.

  I drove to Bay Vista to get the evidence against Josh.

  * * *

  “He’s not back yet,” the doorman said.

  I smiled, showed him the key that I’d neglected to return to Suits last August. “I’m picking up something for Mr. Gordon,” I said. Then I slipped a ten-dollar bill into his hand. “Buzz me, will you, if Haddon shows up?”

  The doorman nodded and ushered me into the lobby.

  The elevator to the penthouse suites was high-speed, but it seemed to take forever. I crossed the vestibule and stood in front of Suits’s door, listening. No sound inside. Quietly I inserted the key in the lock and let myself in.

  I turned on the foyer light, went into the living room to shut the drapes. The stand with the phone and fax machine still stood near the wet bar, although the filing cabinets had been removed. The phone had a built-in answering machine; its green light shone steadily. I examined it; no extra wiring, no special equipment, but it might contain a bugging device that activated a concealed recorder.

  Kitchen next. The extension that I’d used to call Nate Evans yesterday—with Josh no doubt listening in on the living room phone—was mounted on the wall next to the double oven. The room was immaculate; apparently Josh used it as seldom as Suits had. The cupboards were empty except for one next to the sink that held an assortment of mismatched glasses and dishes. One drawer contained a similar collection of flatware and utensils. On the counter were coffee, salt, pepper, and a box of Triscuits. The fridge would have made Mother Hubbard feel well provisioned.

  So where was it?

  I looked more closely at the wall phone. The paint was chipped around its edges and a small strip was several shades darker than the rest of the wall. Wires could have been run from it to … there.

  It was one of those ornamental cupboards that they put over stoves to conceal the ducts for the exhaust fan. I stood on tiptoe, opened it. On either side of the duct were small spaces that had been covered with wood panels that didn’t quite match that of the cabinetry. I reached up, pried one loose.

  Got it!

  When I had the recorder down from the cupboard, I set it on the counter and disconnected it from the wiring. It was a voice-activated type, and the tape cassette in it was more than three-quarters run, set at extended play. Quickly I replaced the panel, closed the cupboard. There were some paper bags stuffed between the fridge and the wall; I put the recorder into one, turned out the lights, and got out of there. I would listen to the tape in my car, where there was no risk of an unpleasant interruption.

  * * *

  I drove down the Embarcadero and turned onto Brannan Street. Pulled over to the curb in front of one of the many art galleries that dot the SoMa area. The gallery was closed, the nearby sidewalks dark and deserted; a streetlamp directly overhead gave me enough illumination so I could operate the recorder without having to use my flashlight or the dome light.

  I reversed the tape partway, pressed the play button. Heard my own voice repeating Nate Evans’s directions to his house. Reversed again, this time winding it all the way back. Suits and Charles Loftus, his moneyman, were discussing returns on investment. I sped through several routine conversations between my client and his associates; listened with more interest to one in which he told Dottie Collier that he’d met with me and hoped I’d take his case. For a while after that there was nothing but a series of messages on the answering machine, some expressing condolences on Anna’s death.

  The only conversations Suits hadn’t bothered to tape, it seemed, were the private ones between himself and his wife.

  Next there was Josh: ordering a pizza, telling Noah Romanchek that the corporate aircraft were being maintained at Oakland’s North Field. And finally something of real interest:

  “Hey, Sid, I might have more work for you.”

  “Oh, yeah? What?”

  “Better to talk it over in person. I can be out there in a couple of hours.”

  “Come on to the house.”

  “You know better than that. There’s a new development being built on the east side—Orchard View.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Meet me there, end of Apple Lane, at midnight. And don’t tell anybody, even the wife, about this.”

  Nobody had ever claimed Sid Blessing was bright.

  After that Josh didn’t use the phone much. He canceled a dental appointment, ordered Chinese food. And then a woman’s voice came onto the tape, shrill and urgent:

  “Josh, you moved! I had to call the manager at your old building to find out where to reach you.”

  “What do you want, Brenda?”

  “This investigator, Sharon McCone, is here in Lost Hope, claims she’s working for your boss. She knows Anna was with him for a while. She came around to the store tonight asking about her stay here.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “Nothing. I sent her to the sheriff’s substation.”

  “Not smart. That’ll make her all the more suspicious.”

  “Well, I didn’t know what else to do. Why didn’t you tell me he’d hired a private detective?”

  “I had no idea she’d go to Nevada.”

  “What’s this stuff about somebody harassing Gordon?”

  “Just T.J.’s paranoia getting the best of him. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Josh, what if she finds out—”

  “How could she?”

  “Well, there’re a few people who know Leon’s my half brother. What if she finds out and goes to see him? Leon … well, you know how he is. What if he tells her he saw us—”

  “She’s not going to find out about Leon. She’s not going to go out there. And even if she did, what could she uncover?”

  “Him … it. It’s still there under that sculpture I had Leon make.”

  “For God’s sake, Brenda, get a grip. If you’re that worried, go out to Leon’s and tell him not to say anything if she comes around.”

  “You can’t tell Leon anything.”

  “Well, try. And keep an eye on him. Call me back if there’re any problems.”

  Walker called him back:

  “Well, I think I got through to Leon. I handed him a story in that crazy jargon he’s always spouting, and he fell for it. I think it’s going to be okay. But what if …?”

  “Just keep an eye on him. That’s all you can do.”

  Another call from Walker, the next day:

  “Josh, she was out there! I saw her, and she took a picture of the sculpture on the … place.”

  “How do you know that’s what she was taking?”

  “Because I stole the film from her camera and had it developed, that’s how! And she was in the house with Leon for a while. God knows what he told her.”

  “You’d better get him away from there for a while. Take him on a camping trip or something. You know the desert; just go hide out. If McCone does find out about … it, if she does, you’ll be safe till I can get to her and do some damage control.”

  “But the sheriff’s deputy—”

  “That deputy you’ve got there couldn’t find his ass with both hands, and he sure won’t be able to find you or anything else in the desert.”


  “Okay, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll throw my gear in the truck and go get Leon right away. But what about this McCone woman?”

  “I’ll think of a way to take care of her.”

  The next call was from Romanchek, telling Josh I’d gone to Monora:

  “I don’t know if she’s found out anything. She was very closemouthed about what she’s doing there.”

  “You’re pretty damn cool about this, Noah.”

  “What do you want me to do, work myself up into a frenzy? Besides, what’s she going to do with the information? Implicate her own client in a drug frame? She’s got to be sophisticated enough to know these things are done all the time.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. And I get the feeling she goes her own way, just like T.J.”

  “If she even tries, we’ll slap a multimillion-dollar defamation suit on her, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “If you say so. … You really think we should fly up to Mendo tomorrow?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt. For some reason, McCone wants T.J. back here in the city. I want him back, too—it would make it easier to keep tabs on him.”

  “Then I’ll see you at Oakland at nine-thirty.”

  There were no other calls until mine to Mick, Chuck Westerkamp, and Nate Evans on Sunday. If Josh had listened to all three, he’d known Bodine’s body had been identified and that everything was falling apart. The pressure had made him desperate, sent him after me.

  Sometime after I’d left, Brenda Walker called again:

  “My God, where’ve you been, Josh? Why don’t you at least leave your answering machine on?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Little town called Caliente; it’s way to hell and gone over by Utah. I had to come in for supplies. Did you hear what happened?”

  “What happened where?”

  “Lost Hope, you fool! They dug up the drifter.”