Leave a Message for Willie

by Marcia Muller

  The garage took up the entire basement and must have been close to a thousand square feet. Its walls were lined floor to ceiling with merchandise on makeshift plywood shelving. A long clothes rack held expensive-looking suits, coats and dresses. Most of the goods on the shelves – small appliances, housewares, TVs, video recorders, cameras, and sound equipment – was new and still in the original packaging, but I spotted a group of more interesting older things – other pedestal sinks, some stained-glass panels, an ancient pinball machine, and a Victrola.

  Two men in work clothes – presumably the truckers Willie had mentioned – were sitting on a pair of mismatched kitchen chairs in the space where a car would normally have been parked. When I entered, they stood up, shuffling their feet and glancing warily from me to Willie. He held up a hand and said, “Relax. She’s okay,” and they returned to their seats.

  To me, Willie added, “I’ve still got some dealing to do. Look around, why don’t you?”

  I nodded and, marveling at the quantity and variety of merchandise, wandered off toward the back of the garage. While the light up front came from fluorescent fixtures, here it was filtered through two wire-mesh-covered windows that looked out on a yard. I glanced through them and saw a sun-parched lawn and crumbling cement birdbath. There was a cluttered desk to one side of the window, and a two-year-old Japan Airlines calendar – a feeble attempt at decoration – on the wall above it. Next to the desk stood an old refrigerator, its motor wheezing and grunting as if it might give up the effort at any moment. I stood and examined the costume jewelry in a glass case that separated the office area from the rest of the garage, listening to Willie’s conversation with the truckers.

  “Yeah, Joey, these suede jackets are nice. Real nice. But it’s hotter than the hinges of hell out there. Who’s gonna buy a suede jacket in this heat?”

  “In the fall—”

  “Sure, in the fall. Then they’ll move. But in the meantime, I got a dozen jackets laying around here taking up space.”

  “Willie, that’s top-quality suede.”

  “I’m not questioning the quality. I’m saying I can’t move them now. Bring them back, maybe in a couple of months. Then we’ll talk.”

  “I can’t keep them around either. Not at the price you’re asking. Ties up too much of my capital.” There was a long pause. “Tell you what I can do: I can take them off your hands for half of what you’re asking.”

  “Aw, come on, Willie!”

  “It’s the best I can do. I don’t know, Joey, maybe you can find somebody else who’s willing to tie up his money in out-of-season goods. If I were you, I’d give it a try.”

  The man was silent. Then Willie spoke to the other. “How many of these cameras you got, Jim?”

  “Six more in the truck.”

  “Japanese, huh? Nikon, that’s a good brand. But look here, Jim: there’s part of it missing.”

  “What the hell do you mean? That’s the way they shipped them, right from the factory.”

  “Well, maybe they screwed up. This camera’s not all here. See this gizmo? Where you put the flash? It’s not there. If the flash isn’t there, it don’t work right. How’s somebody supposed to take pictures inside if there’s no flash?”

  “Jesus, Willie, I’ve got seven of these.”

  “Yeah, seven cameras that don’t work.”

  “They go for hundreds in the stores.”

  “Right – but those have got all the parts.”

  “I’ll never unload them—”

  “Tell you what. A hundred bucks for the lot.”

  “I thought you said they was no good.”

  “They’re not.” Willie’s voice became elaborately patient. “But I see a lot of stuff come through here; maybe someday I’ll see a flash attachment for one of these. Maybe not. It’s a long shot, but I’m willing to bet a hundred bucks on the off chance that someday a flash attachment will come through that door.”

  “I don’t know. I’d hoped to get —”

  “Well, you can quit hoping. Nobody’s going to pay big bucks for a camera that’s not all there.”

  The man sighed. “Okay. I’ll go get the others.”

  “Do that. I’ll write you up a receipt.” Willie started back toward the office, then stopped and snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah. Joey, what about those jackets? You want to unload them for half price?”

  “Guess I got no choice.”

  “I’ll do up a receipt for you too.” Willie went around the jewelry counter, winking at me, and pulled two Budweisers from the refrigerator. He took them to the man, saying, “Have a beer and give one to Jim when he comes back.” Then he returned to the desk and busied himself with a receipt book and a check register. The men joined him, receipts were signed, checks were endorsed, cash changed hands, and the truckers left. I watched the entire procedure, unable to make much sense of it.

  After the truckers were gone, I said, “Willie, I have a Nikon camera. They work perfectly well without flash attachments.”

  He grinned and took out two more beers. “I know.”

  “They never come equipped with flash attachments. You buy them separately.”

  “Yeah, but old Jim don’t know that.” He opened a beer and handed it to me. “He’s what you might call ignorant.”

  “You tricked him.”

  “Sure I did. Dealt him right out of a nice profit.”

  “What about the other guy – Joey? Will those jackets really sit here for two months?”

  “Hell, no. I’ll have them at the flea markets tomorrow. They’ll be gone in an hour.”

  “You’re quite the businessman.”

  “It’s all in the wheeling and dealing. Wheeling and dealing.” His voice was flat, as if the transactions had given him a high and he was now coming down from it. “Let’s go have a seat up front.”

  I followed him up there and took one of the mismatched kitchen chairs. Willie closed the garage door with an automatic control and slumped next to me.

  “I take it the fellow in the suit wasn’t out there when you got back?” I asked.

  “Not today, for a change.”

  I sipped beer for a moment, trying to accommodate myself to his sudden change in mood. Finally I said, “Can I ask you some questions?”

  “Fire away.”

  “They probably won’t seem like they have much to do with your problems, but I need to get a feel for your business before I decide how I can help you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “You gave those two men receipts, wrote them checks, and then also paid them in cash.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s all that supposed to accomplish?”

  “Keeps the law off my back. In case you get caught with hot stuff, what you need is a receipt and a canceled check. That proves you thought you were buying legitimate.”

  “If the merchandise is hot, what does it matter what you thought?”

  “Because to convict a person of receiving, they’ve got to prove he knew the stuff was stolen.”

  I remember Hank telling me something to that effect once. “So you write up a receipt. Not in the person’s real name, I assume.”

  “Nope. And the check’s the same way.”

  “Then how can he cash it?”

  “He doesn’t. I pay him in cash. He endorses the check with the fake name. And I just take it to the bank and deposit it right back into one of my accounts. Then, if the cops come around, I got a receipt and a canceled check, all legal.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “It is. But it works.”

  “I guess you do a pretty good business.”

  “It’s a living.”

  “How’d you get started?”

  “In a small way. And then it got bigger.”

  I sensed that was all I would get out of him, so I went onto another tack. “Do people like these truckers—”

  “Thieves, you mean.”

  “Well, yes, thieves. Do they come here any t
ime they feel like it?”

  “There’s a pattern to it. Early in the morning, I’m usually down here by seven. By ten I’ve done most of my buying. Then I take it easy, wait for people to see the ‘garage sale’ sign and drop in. Some of the stuff I buy comes from shoplifters. They start coming in around one-thirty, two, after they’ve worked the stores over the noon hour. That’s when they get crowded and security is lax.”

  I’d once worked as a department store security guard and I remembered those hectic noon hours all too well. Most shoplifters I’d apprehended during the day were kids or frustrated housewives – people you really had to feel sorry for on a certain level. But the professional thieves who operated during the peak hours – they were hard cases and, as far as I was concerned, deserved tougher sentences than the courts handed out to them.

  Again I felt a twinge of conscience at even contemplating helping Willie, but I had to admit I was fascinated. “So your thieves pretty much keep to normal business hours?”

  “With me they do. Oh, when I was first in the business they’d come around any time – two, three in the morning even. If I didn’t answer the door, they’d stand on the sidewalk and holler, toss stones at my bedroom window. I put a stop to that fast – after all, I got my reputation with the neighbors to consider.”

  Willie looked thoughtful, scratching his curly head. “I guess you could say I’m quieting down in my old age,” he went on. “There was a time when I’d do anything to turn a profit. But now, I don’t know. I don’t need to prove anything anymore. I mean, I know I’m good.”

  I glanced around the garage. “I guess you must be.”

  He sat up straighter, his enthusiasm returning. “I’ll tell you – a good fence is somebody who can move merchandise. I’ve handled just about any kind of goods you can name in my day; I can get rid of anything. But you know what? There’s no thrill in it anymore. Oh sure, dealing like you heard me do with those truckers gives me a lot of satisfaction. But it don’t last, not like it used to. Hell, more and more I find myself making a legitimate deal just because it’s easier.” He glanced sidelong at me, as if he had just admitted a minor perversion and was afraid I would be shocked.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said mildly.

  “Okay, so now you tell me this: How are you going to stop this guy who’s following me?”

  I was about to say I wouldn’t know if I was going to take his case until I spoke with Hank, but something stopped me. This was intriguing, dammit. Willie Whelan could provide me with an entrée into a world I’d never see otherwise. And the knowledge I’d gain might be useful in solving future cases; after all, wasn’t it better to know how the other side operated? “How would you like to take on a new employee?”

  “Huh?”

  “You say you have three runners – why not add another?”

  “You mean you’d pose as one and check things out?”

  “Right. It’s better if no one knows who I am, even your other people.”

  Willie studied me, then nodded decisively. “That might work. You can come along with me tomorrow to the flea markets and I’ll show you the ropes. I’ll tell my runners I’m training you to handle the Berkeley Flea Market – I don’t have anybody there.”

  “Good.”

  He went to open the garage door. “I leave early. You’ll have to be here at seven.”

  “No problem.”

  Willie accompanied me to the driveway, stopping to kick at the tire of his truck, which was parked in front of the house. It was still loaded with the merchandise I’d seen at the flea market, including the parrot and player piano.

  “Isn’t it a lot of trouble, lugging a piano around?” I asked.

  “Damn right it is. I only do it because I’m trying to unload it fast. It’s taking up too much space for what it’s worth.”

  “No luck, huh?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve been dragging it all over for a month now.” He stared at the piano, his mood pensive again. “And wouldn’t you know it? It just had to be.”

  “Had to be what?”

  “I took that piano in a legitimate deal. Wouldn’t you know?”

  3.

  My new house was on a one-block segment of Church Street, out past Thirtieth, where the J streetcar tracks turn and come to an end. The street was not properly in my old neighborhood, the Mission district, nor was it in the newly fashionable area called Glen Park. If anything, it had a character all its own — one growing out of the blend of races and social classes that lived there in peaceable and friendly proximity. After only three months, I’d been made to feel I was a welcome addition to the tiny community.

  The house itself was a five-room brown-shingled structure nestled between two larger Victorians. One of some four thousand cottages built by the city’s Earthquake Relief Corporation to house homeless victims of the 1906 ‘quake, it had originally been a dark green three-room box without any claim to distinction. Over the years, however, a succession of owners had added the shingles, a front and rear porch, two additional rooms, and indoor plumbing. The toilet was in a cold cubicle on the back porch, and the living room ceiling was caving in, but as soon as I saw the house I fell in love with it. And before the then-owners had even accepted my offer I’d rushed to the library to read up on the earthquake cottages.

  As almost every San Franciscan knows, the ‘quake and fire of April 18, 1906, left at least half the city’s 450,000 residents homeless. At first the people improvised, living in makeshift camps on vacant lots or in the parks, but the foggy summer weather soon made it apparent that there had to be a more permanent solution to the housing problem. It was then that the Relief Corporation stepped forward with its plan for the cottages – two rooms, some three, and none costing over a hundred and fifty dollars to construct. Soon teams of horses could be seen pulling the little green houses to their final destinations on empty land all over the city. Mine had been hauled to Church Street, and there it had sat on its deep pine-shaded lot, waiting for me to find it some seventy years later.

  Now as I got out of my car and approached the front steps, I smiled at the house, pointedly ignoring the fact that the pitched roof was badly in need of repair. On the porch, behind the pot of geraniums I’d set out, was my cat Watney. He’d taken to hiding there and spying on the activity in the street – a ridiculous ploy, since the black-and-white spotted creature was so fat it would have taken a redwood tree to camouflage him adequately. As I put my key in the lock, he leapt out, nipped at my ankle, and then darted through the door in front of me. I followed him as he sashayed proudly back to the kitchen. Of course, Watney thought I’d bought the house for him.

  All five rooms were empty, but there was a big pot simmering on the stove. I lifted the lid and smelled tomatoes, onions, garlic, oregano, and other less definable spices. It had to be one of the wonderful Italian sauces that were Don’s specialty. I looked out the window and spotted him in a lounge chair under the big pine at the back of the yard. The sight of him flooded me with a warm, homey feeling – one I’d been experiencing with increasing frequency since he’d come to visit a week ago.

  I responded to Watney’s pleas for food, then got myself a glass of white wine, wondering, as I did every time I went into the refrigerator, why it was my fate to be plagued with strange appliances. In my last apartment, I’d had an old electrified icebox that didn’t keep things very cold. This house had come equipped with a bright yellow ‘fridge on which someone had painted racing stripes. It froze everything.

  Before I went to join Don in the yard, I picked up the phone and tried to call Hank at All Souls. The phone there rang seven times before one of the attorneys answered, and then there was so much noise in the background that I could barely hear him. They were having a party, he said. Did I want to come over?

  “What are you celebrating?” I asked.

  “Well, today’s the day back in 1952 that Lillian Hellman refused to squeal on her associates before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities.”

  “What?”

  “It really is.”

  “Oh.” I realized he must be standing next to the literary calendar that someone had posted in the kitchen. “Is Hank there?”

  “No. He went to Bodega Bay for the weekend. Guess he doesn’t like Lillian Hellman.”

  “Probably not. If you see him, tell him I’ll talk to him on Monday.”

  “Are you coming over?”

  “I don’t think so.” I wasn’t in any mood for a drunken crowd.

  “Don’t like Hellman either, huh?”

  “She’s okay, but I prefer Dashiell Hammett.” I hung up and took my wine to the backyard.

  By coincidence, Don was reading a novel by another mystery writer – Ross Macdonald, whose work I enjoyed even more than Hammett’s. He set it down on the spool table between the two lounge chairs when I came out.

  “I got you hooked, didn’t I?” I sat down and nodded at the book. Mysteries were practically all I read these days, with the exception of an occasional foray into my old field, sociology. As I got older and further removed from college, however, the Soc books tended to sit face down on the coffee table, open to one of the first ten pages, gathering dust.

  “Yeah, you have. I only meant to read for a little while and then light the barbecue, but…”

  “We’re barbecuing tonight?”

  “I thought we would.”

  “So what’s that in the pot on the stove?”

  “Barbecue sauce.”

  “Italian barbecue sauce?”

  “Sure. You don’t expect a Del Boccio to cook like a Texan, do you?”

  Again the homey warmth spread through me, this time tinged with unease. I’d have to examine this feeling more carefully sometime when I was alone. Was I really ready for…?