Leave a Message for Willie

by Marcia Muller

  “What about?”

  “Willie.”

  He glanced down at his robe. “Will it take long?”

  “As I said, just a few minutes.”

  “All right. Let me change first, though.” He opened the door wider and I followed him into a living room that was furnished with a cheap suite you might have found at one of the discount outlets on Mission Street. Its plaid upholstery clashed violently with Marchetti’s robe.

  “Make yourself at home; I’ll be right back.” He went off down the hallway.

  I stood looking around. The couch, two chairs, and coffee table were arranged formally in front of a small fireplace. The lamps on the end tables were green ceramic and reminded me of the kind you always see in motels. I have a theory about these motel lamps: They are made as ugly as possible to discourage people from stealing them. The only attractive lamp I’d ever seen in a motel room was bolted down.

  The surfaces of the tables were empty except for a layer of dust. There were no magazines, pictures, books, or knick-knacks. The only personal object in the room, in fact, was not exactly a homey touch; it was a glass-fronted cabinet full of hunting rifles and shotguns. I went over to take a closer look. There was a lone handgun in the case, probably a .45 caliber military-type pistol, but there was something odd about it. I was still trying to figure it out when Marchetti came back, fully dressed.

  “You like my collection?”

  I turned. “It’s impressive, if you’re into hunting. I was wondering, what’s this one here, the handgun?”

  “Nel-Spot 007. You know what it’s for?”

  “No, what?”

  “They use it on ranches for marking stock. The Forestry Service also uses it. It’s carbon-dioxide powered, shoots pellets loaded with paint. You hit your target, the pellet breaks, and you’ve got your marking.”

  “Interesting. Have you worked on ranches?”

  “As a matter of fact—”

  The phone rang. “Excuse me a minute.” Marchetti picked up the receiver and said, “Yeah?”

  I sat down in one of the plaid chairs. Marchetti listened intently for a moment. “I see. That’s bad news, terrible…No, I haven’t…I didn’t…Sure, certainly…Okay, thanks.” He replaced the receiver and turned to me, his face solemn. “That was Selena Gonzalez. Alida Edwards was murdered tonight.”

  “Good Lord,” I said, feigning surprise.

  He sat down on the couch, shaking his head. “A shame. A goddamned shame. She was a lovely girl.”

  “How did Selena hear about it?”

  “On the radio.”

  I looked at my watch. It was ten-fifteen; the story would have just made the ten o’clock news broadcast. “How did Alida die?”

  “She was stabbed in the neck.”

  I shuddered. “How’s Selena taking it? Is she very upset?”

  “Hard to say. She gets pretty dramatic. You never know what’s real and what’s for show. She says they’ve got an APB out on Willie.”

  It didn’t surprise me; McFate had his faults but he worked quickly and efficiently. “I’m trying to find Willie myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “Well, I don’t know where he is. Do you think he killed Alida?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe he did either. He was crazy about the woman.” He paused. “For an employee, you’re mighty sure of your boss’s innocence, though.”

  “I’m also Willie’s friend. And I care what happens to him.” As I said it, I realized it was true. In spite of my disapproval of his occupation, I genuinely liked the fence. Probably the feeling had started when I watched him convince Sam Thomas to see a doctor and have the bill sent to him. Certainly it had grown when I saw him take McFate down a peg. Whatever the reason, right now I might be the best friend Willie had.

  “Why did you think Willie might be here?” Marchetti asked.

  “I’m just checking all his friends and acquaintances – anyone I can think of.”

  He nodded.

  “Can I check back with you later, in case he shows up?”

  “You can, but I doubt it will do any good. Willie won’t come here – especially with the police looking for him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s just say he and I don’t see eye-to-eye.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything. Never have.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “It’s between Willie and me.”

  Strange that both Adair and Marchetti didn’t get along with Willie; the fence was such an amiable man that I found it hard to understand. “Mr. Marchetti, can you at least give me addresses and phone numbers for Willie’s other two runners? I’ve already talked to Monty Adair, but I don’t know how to reach Roger Beck or Sam Thomas.”

  He went to the table where the phone was and took out an address book. “I happen to have them, since the runners sometimes spell Willie at the Saltflats. I like to be able to reach all the people who sell regularly at my market.” Paging through the book, he read off an address in Oakland for Beck, and one here in the city, on Forty-Ninth Avenue, for Thomas.

  I copied them down, thanked him, and left. The address for Sam Thomas was not far way, near the Great Highway and the beach. From what I’d seen, Willie was friendlier with Thomas than with Beck. I decided to stop at Sam’s first.

  14.

  The fog was blowing in off the ocean when I arrived at Forty-Ninth Avenue; it poured over the tops of the sand dunes and rushed across the Great Highway. There was a construction area across the street from Sam Thomas’s house – part of a big sewer project that had been underway for several years – and the heavy equipment and piles of pipe loomed dark in the swirling mist.

  When I got out of the car, gritty particles of sand stung my face. Narrowing my eyes against it, I looked up and down the street for Willie’s truck. It wasn’t there, but if he was at Sam’s he wouldn’t park close by; after all, he must know the police were looking for him. I locked the car and went up to the address Marchetti had given me. It was a shabby frame bungalow, its white paint pitted by sand.

  The front of the house was dark, but light streamed out from a side window. I knocked and waited, hearing nothing but the roar of the surf and the howl of the wind. Then there were footsteps, the door opened, and Sam Thomas stood silhouetted in the doorway. He was dressed as he had been at the flea market, in jeans and a T-shirt, and he reeked of beer.

  “Sharon. What are you doing here?” He spoke slowly, giving precise pronunciation to each word.

  “I’m looking for Willie.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Then he was here?”

  “Until about half an hour ago.”

  “Damn!”

  A voice spoke behind Sam. “Who is it, honey?” Then a face appeared to his right: a lovely oval framed by straight black hair.

  “It’s Sharon McCone, the detective,” Sam said to her. “Sharon, this is my lady, Carolyn Bui.”

  She stepped forward and looked me over, then extended her hand. “Come in, please. It’s cold with the door open.”

  We went through a darkened living room to a yellow kitchen that was carpeted in a hypnotic black-and-white pattern. A table extended from one wall and around it were three director’s chairs. I could tell where Sam had been sitting by the open can of beer. Opposite it was a mug of coffee.

  Carolyn motioned for me to take the third chair. In this light I could appreciate her diminutive features and delicately up-tipped eyes. Not Chinese, I decided; more likely Southeast Asian or perhaps Eurasian.

  “Willie told you I was a detective?” I asked.

  Sam sat down and picked up his beer. “He said there wasn’t much point in hiding it anymore.”

  “No. It wasn’t a very good idea to begin with.”

  Carolyn took her mug to the stove. “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Please.” I could use some; it looked like it would be
a long night.

  Sam crumpled his beer can and tossed it into a plastic trash basket, where it joined dozens of others. Reaching behind him, he opened the refrigerator and took out another. He seemed high, but not drunk; probably he was one of those people who – when they want to – can maintain a certain level of mild intoxication throughout the day.

  Carolyn set the coffee in front of me and joined us. “You’re looking for Willie?”

  “Yes. When did he get here?”

  Sam looked at a big clock on the wall over the table. “Around nine, maybe. He was in bad shape, man. I gave him a few beers. Carolyn tried to make him eat, but he wouldn’t.”

  “And then?”

  “We sat around and talked, mostly about Alida. About the guy who got shot in his garage. And then, all of a sudden, he decided to split.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Carolyn said, “I think he didn’t want to get us in trouble by staying here. Willie’s a very thoughtful man.”

  Sam glanced at her and then looked away. “I doubt it even crossed his mind, at a time like that.”

  “He left out of consideration for us.”

  “Look, I know Willie better than you do—”

  “Sam.”

  He shrugged and drank some beer.

  “Did he say where he planned to go?” I asked.

  “No,” Carolyn said.

  “Do you have any guesses where he might be?”

  “A motel, maybe. He took Sam’s van and left his truck hidden in our garage.”

  “Oh, come on, honey,” Sam said. “The man’s wanted by the police. He’s not just going to walk into some motel.”

  “He might.”

  Again Sam fell silent.

  “What about other people he might have gone to?” I said. “I’ve already talked to Monty Adair and Mack Marchetti. Neither of them felt he would seek them out, but surely there must be someone—“

  Sam laughed shortly. “You can bet he wouldn’t go to either of them. Willie hates Marchetti, thinks he’s a fascist. Adair – well he doesn’t trust him.”

  Personally, I didn’t trust the cold-eyed vendor either, but I asked, “Why?”

  “Monty’s real anxious to get ahead. And he’s smart. Willie respects him for his mind, but he’s not too sure Monty wouldn’t use his brains to screw him if he could. So he watches him real careful.”

  “Monty’s too smart to try to cheat Willie,” Carolyn said.

  “You never know.”

  “He would never risk it.”

  Sam reached for another beer. I was beginning to get an idea of how this household operated, and I was also liking Carolyn a whole lot less. Her constant overruling of Sam’s opinions couldn’t be very good for someone whose self-esteem was already low.

  “What about Roger Beck?” I asked. “Would Willie go to him?”

  Sam smiled slyly. “Not hardly.”

  “I sensed they weren’t friends when I went down to the San Jose market with Willie.”

  “You got it. There’s woman trouble there, bad woman trouble.”

  “You mean, Willie took somebody away from Roger?”

  “The opposite.”

  “What? I can’t believe that.”

  “It’s true. Willie’s ex-wife divorced him so she could marry Rog. She hated Willie’s business, said he ignored her and spent all his time in the garage or down at the Oasis with a bunch of thieves. She told Willie that Rog was sensitive and understood her needs. I think Rog was available and a good way to hurt Willie. Anyway, it didn’t last long; within a year she ran off with some salesman. I tell you, when Willie heard about that, it made his whole year.”

  I remembered the way the fence had needled Beck about his wife leaving him – and how Beck had just stood there and taken it.

  “Willie’s business has caused him plenty of woman trouble,” Sam went on. “Take Alida – she could never face up to the fact he was a fence. She’d say, ‘Willie’s a perfectly legitimate businessman,’ and then she’d give you that prissy look of hers that would dare you to say otherwise.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about her that way now” Carolyn said.

  “Well, she was prissy. Her being dead doesn’t change that.”

  “Still, it isn’t nice.”

  “Alida wasn’t nice, sometimes.”

  “Sam!”

  He lapsed into silence, staring moodily at the top of his beer can.

  I looked at the big clock. It was close to eleven-thirty. “So Willie came here around nine and stayed until roughly ten-thirty?”

  “Yes.” Carolyn got the coffee pot and refilled our cups.

  “And you talked mainly about Alida.”

  “He kept telling us how he was standing in his front window, wondering why she was late,” she said. “He saw the lights from the police cars at the corner and people going down there. So he decided to find out what had happened. You can imagine how he felt when he saw her lying there.”

  “Did he have any idea who might have killed her?”

  “He said there had been a prowler in his house, someone who took the Torahs the man who got shot was looking for. He figured Alida came along, saw the guy leaving, and followed him.”

  It was a possibility. “But why would she follow him alone, rather than get Willie to go with her?”

  “That was Alida’s way of doing things. She was very independent.”

  “Stubborn,” Sam said.

  Carolyn glared at him.

  “Willie has this idea that the same person who shot the guy in his garage killed Alida,” Sam said. After a pause, he added, “For such a little wimp, that guy caused a lot of trouble.”

  Carolyn looked sharply at him. “I think ‘trouble’ is too mild a word for it.”

  He shrugged. “Think of him, though: scrawny, half bald, couldn’t have weighed over a hundred pounds wet, running around decked out like he was on his way to a funeral—”

  “Sam,” I said, “when did you see Levin?”

  “Oh, I guess it was about a week ago.”

  “Did he come to the Alameda market?”

  “No. It was in David’s Deli, downtown in the theater district. I was walking by and he and Selena Gonzalez were at a table in the front window. Heads together over their sandwiches, real cozy. I thought it was funny – Selena thinks she’s quite a woman, and there she was with this wimp in a skullcap. So I stopped and tapped on the glass. Gave her a scare. But then she got mad and made motions for me to scram. I went – I don’t like to mess too much with a crazy broad like Selena. You never know what she’ll do.”

  No, I thought, you certainly don’t. “Sam, did you tell Willie about this?”

  “Not until tonight. I’d forgotten about it until he started talking about this Levin. You know, maybe that was what made him take off; he asked a whole lot of questions and then he left.”

  I stood up, nearly knocking my coffee over.

  Both Sam and Carolyn looked surprised. “You taking off too?”

  “Yes. Thanks for the coffee. I’ll be in touch.”

  Now that I’d heard Sam’s story about Levin and Selena, I thought I knew where Willie had gone. And I wanted to catch up with him in a hurry. Willie might be smart, and he might be tough, but he was an amateur at the business of detection.

  15.

  When I’d been at Alida’s the previous night, Selena had said she lived next door on the ground floor and had motioned at the north wall of the apartment. That meant her building was the Spanish-style stucco two doors from the corner. It was a house, but there was a small entry to one side of the garage, and Selena’s name was on a mailbox next to it. Probably what she had was an in-law apartment.

  There was no knocker or buzzer, so I tried the knob. The door swung open into a narrow passageway similar to the one Willie had described at his house. It was dark in there, and the damp air smelled of cats, but at the far end I could hear rock music and see a shaft of light spilling from und
er another door. I felt my way back there and knocked hard, hoping to be heard above the music.

  In a few seconds the volume decreased and Selena’s voice said, “Who is it?”

  “Sharon McCone. I need to talk to you.”

  “Go away. It’s late.”

  “I have to talk now. It’s important.”

  “I was asleep. Come back tomorrow.”

  How could she sleep with that music playing? “Please, it can’t wait.”

  There was a pause and then I heard a deadbolt turn. Selena’s face peered over a security chain. Her thick hair tumbled down around her shoulders, and her face was pale, her eyes red. She stared at me for a moment, then unhooked the chain and let me in.

  The apartment was only one room, the small kitchen separated from the rest of it by a formica counter. A couple of rickety-looking stools stood in front of it and there was a mattress on the floor in one corner, but otherwise the place was devoid of furnishings. Selena, who was wrapped in a multicolored afghan, regarded me for an instant and then went to the counter and turned the radio up again. A raucous jingle announced that KSUN was “the light of the Bay,” and then the disc jockey began babbling about a sixties nostalgia party.

  I resented the notion of the sixties as nostalgia. After all, I could remember the sixties; I had been almost an adult then. And the station sounded even more frantic than KPSM, where Don worked in Port San Marco. Why couldn’t he be offered a job at a decent station, for Lord’s sake?

  Selena sat down on the mattress, pulling the afghan closer around her. In spite of its protection, she shivered. I took a good look at her and realized she was not only upset, but scared. Perching on one of the rickety stools, I said, “Are you okay?”

  She shrugged.

  “I know it must have been an awful shock about Alida.”

  She started to speak, but it came out a croak, and she cleared her throat. “It was horrible. To hear it that way, on the radio. She was so young and alive, and now this. It makes me wonder when they will come for me.”

  “They?”

  “Death’s messengers.”

  Marchetti had said she was dramatic, and he’d been right. “I wouldn’t worry, Selena. You’re safe here.”