The Magician's Tale

by William Bayer

  "Tell me about it," I urge.

  "What?"

  "The T case."

  He groans. "That's a sorrowful ugly story."

  "You're a terrific storyteller. You used to tell me great bedtime stories." I remember how much I loved the one about the little girl who couldn't see colors but could read people's minds.

  "That was to help you sleep, darlin'."

  "Now help me understand."

  "Oh, sweet Jesus," he groans, "it seems so long ago. . . ."

  There were six T case victims, he recounts, five homicides plus Robbie Sipple, the first in '76; the last, Sipple, in '81, one a year in between. After Sipple they stopped. They were called the T killings because only the torsos were found—no heads or limbs as with Tim. The victims were young males and four were never identified. No fingerprints, no dental work, and in those days DNA matching didn't exist. It was a fluke that even one besides Sipple was ID'ed; he'd been missing, his parents had filed a report, he'd recently had a gallbladder operation and the surgeon recognized the scar.

  "He was gay, promiscuous." Dad says "gay" blandly, but he's of the generation that can't pronounce the word without an involuntary wince. "We learned he hit the baths every night. We assumed the others were like that too, kids who'd drifted here, gay lifestyle capital. But without heads or hands we couldn't ID them."

  The five torsos showed certain common traits. They were from lean, hard, gym-toned bodies; they were all Caucasian; they'd been sodomized; their blood had been drained; their skin had been washed; they'd been left in public places (the Presidio, Point Lobos, Mount Davidson, Twin Peaks, Golden Gate Park) where they were certain to be found. That was one odd thing: that they hadn't been buried or disposed of like the limbs and heads. The other odd thing was the tattoos.

  "We told the papers there were marks. We never got more specific. They were always on the back, on three victims the right shoulder area, on two the butt."

  Dad pours tea into his cup, brings it to his lips, blows on it, sips.

  "The tattoos weren't elaborate, the work was fair at best. We had tattooists in. They estimated the work on each took approximately three to four hours. The designs were abstract. There wasn't a picture of anything, just these curves and lines. The tattooists thought they looked like tribal markings, but they couldn't identify the tribe. We brought in an anthropologist. She said that they looked vaguely South Pacific Island. She couldn't ID them either."

  "Were there colors?" I ask.

  "The ink used was black."

  Well, I think, that's something.

  The case was never solved. Hundreds were interviewed: tattooists professional and prison-trained, surgeons, butchers, known homosexual sadists. There were many leads, all checked out, all dead ends. Then the killings stopped as abruptly as they began. It was one of those weird unsolved San Francisco cases, like the Zodiac killings, but in the T case there were no taunting letters to the press. The killer remained quiet . . . as if his cutting and tattoos said it all. There was something terribly cold and cruel in Torsos that struck everyone who worked it.

  "It was only once that we got even partway close. That was when I was involved."

  Dad pours another cup of tea, holds it in his hands to warm them. This is the bad part of the story, I know, the part that changed his life.

  "It was spring, '81. I was working the Haight, foot patrol, feeling burnt-out. I was thinking a lot those days about what to do when I retired, mulling my dream of setting up a bakery, producing and selling first-rate bread. It was around eight p.m. I was on Waller when I got the call—disturbance on Frederick just two blocks away. There's a hill there, you know, pretty steep. So I huff and puff my way up to this smallish Victorian on Frederick, and there's a middle-aged lady standing on the stoop, the room behind her lit like a Christmas tree.

  "She lets me in. She's fairly panicked. Tells me she owns the house, rents out the basement and a flat upstairs. It's the basement tenant's got her worried. He's new, been there just a couple weeks. Around seven she heard strange sounds from his room, and, a few minutes before, a scream. Too scared to go down and check, she dialed nine-one-one.

  "I listen hard. I can't hear anything. That tells me whatever was happening is probably over . . . and maybe it was just the TV turned on loud, a horror film, cop show, something like that. Still I go down by the outside steps and rap on the door. No answer, but I hear something faint inside like maybe an animal scratching at the wall. I turn the handle and the door opens, no lock, not even firmly shut. There's this young Caucasian male lying in the middle of the floor, wrists bound behind his back, tied to his ankles too. He's helpless, hog-tied, buck-naked except for this hood he's wearing, a full head black leather hood, kind you see in some of the gay leather stores, what they call a discipline helmet, bondage hood, whatever. And he's moving a little but not too much, and I get the impression maybe his air's cut off.

  "I rush over to him, start working on the hood straps. His body's sticky. I yell to the landlady to call for an ambulance. Hell of a time getting that hood off. All those straps and zippers—it was practically sealed to his face. Finally I yank it. This gag thing comes out with it. There's vomit inside and if he's breathing I can't hear it. But he's got a pulse so I cut the ropes turn him over and start the old artificial respiration, pinching his nose, breathing into his lungs. He starts gurgling. By this time the medics have come. I step back. They give him oxygen."

  Dad brings up his napkin, wipes his brow. It's easy for me to imagine him ministering to the kid in that basement, bringing him back to life. It's the way I like to think of him, a hero.

  "After I get off him I look around. I tell you, Kay—this was one shabby pad. No bed, just a ratty couch with broken springs. No closet, just a pile of clothes in the corner. Airplane-size lav with rusty metal shower stall. Beaten-up black-and-white TV. Basically no possessions of value . . . and that makes me curious, because that hood he was wearing, it wasn't cheap.

  "Lots of people in the basement now. Medics, other cops working the Haight, a sergeant from a command unit happened to be in the neighborhood. Lots of confusion too. 'Who is this kid?' 'Is he okay?' 'He sure didn't tie himself up like that!' 'Hey, what's this? Looks like some kind of ink.'

  "They cart the kid out, ambulance him over to Cal Med on Parnassus, then the rest of us start poking around. 'Hey, look at this—amyl nitrite!' 'Wow! A syringe! Think he injected himself?' We're handling everything, passing it around, nobody thinking this has anything to do with the T case. I mean, how could it? No one's been killed, no one's been cut up, there's no torso, nothing to connect it.

  "It's only the next day we find out different. The kid's name is Robbie Sipple, he's nineteen, he works as a stock clerk in a pagan-goods store on Ashbury, moved to the city from Dallas just a month before. Seems he took the afternoon off, was lingering in a gay bar when a handsome thirtyish guy picked him up. Robbie brings the guy home, they screw their brains out, then Robbie takes a little nap. When he wakes up he finds himself bound and gagged with the guy lying next to him whispering weird stuff into his ear—how's he's going to kill him, take his body to a house where he'll cut it up, then leave the pieces in various places around town. Robbie'll just disappear, the guy whispers, no one'll know he's dead 'cause there won't be any trace of him, and now, before he does all that, he's going to put some neat little decorations on Robbie's butt.

  "The tattooing was about to start when somehow, terrified, Robbie spat out his gag and let out with a scream. Right away the guy wrestled the bondage helmet over his head and bound him in it so he couldn't make another sound. There was a tiny hole in the hood, to let in just enough air so he wouldn't suffocate. Robbie couldn't hear anything, couldn't see, move, could barely squirm, didn't know if the guy was still there or not. So he started to panic. Just as he passed out, certain he was going to die, I came in and pulled the helmet off."

  Dad gets the check, pays, we leave the restaurant, start walking over to the bakery. The sun
's shining so I put on shades. I like walking with Dad on the street.

  "You get the picture, Kay. We got someone who was literally in the hands of the T killer, who barely escaped. We got someone who saw him, can describe him, work with a police sketch artist. We also got evidence, stuff that belonged to the killer: the hood, the tattoo ink, a syringe. There may even be fingerprints in the kid's apartment. In short, we got the mother lode. Except—"

  Dad stops to greet a customer, a woman carrying a City Stone Ground bag. She compliments him on his bread and courteous Russian refugee staff.

  ''—except," Dad continues, "all that good luck suddenly turns to shit. Robbie Sipple dies. Right there in the friggin' hospital! He gets out of bed, stands, takes a deep breath and drops to the floor. Naturally they autopsy him. He's got some kind of congenital heart disease. You hear about these cases—high school kid plays basketball, suddenly keels over, he's gone. Problem was young Robbie hadn't given us a description yet. Just two words, 'handsome' and 'thirtyish.'

  "And there was another problem too, a very big problem. That hood I pulled off him, the ink, the syringe—no one can find them, they're not in Robbie's apartment, not in the police property room. They're gone. Vanished. Thin air!" Dad snaps his fingers. Click! "Like that!"

  We're standing in front of City Stone Ground. I smell the aroma of the bread. It reminds me of weekends during my childhood when Dad baked for us, trying out brands of flour, sources of spring water, new shapes, baking stones, leavenings. He was a magician with components: flour, yeast, water, salt. Our house was filled with the sweet warm fragrances of his pain au levain, round sourdough loaves, baguettes. Bread making, which started as his hobby, soon became his obsession. He was striving toward something pure and impeccable—a perfect loaf with a shattering crust. He loved working with his hands. He'd talk about kneading, how good it made him feel. Once, when I asked him why he liked bread making so much, he meditated on my question. "A good loaf doesn't lie," he finally said.

  Dad shakes his head. He's getting to the bad part now, the part that happened after they found the evidence was gone.

  "Everyone who was there that night—me, the other cops, the sergeant—we're called into a meeting with Inspector Jonathan Topper Hale, lead detective on the T case, so-called 'city's smartest cop.' We go over it with him again and again. No one can explain the loss. We all remember seeing the evidence, handling it, but everyone says he handed it off to someone else. Bottom line: No one took responsibility, secured it, bagged it, initialed and sealed the bag. But then no one had any inkling it related to a capital case. Conclusion: We must have left it in the flat, but the flat wasn't sealed. So what happened to it? Hale starts bearing down. 'Don't you remember?' 'What are you—assholes?' 'You left the stuff there like fuckin' idiots?'"

  There's a gloss of sweat on Dad's forehead as he relives the humiliation.

  "The top forensics team in the city went into that basement. They dusted, vacuumed, crawled around the floor with their friggin' microscopes. They found lots of prints, all sorts of hairs, but nothing they could convincingly tie to the guy who told Robbie Sipple he'd kill him and cut him up.

  "You remember what happened. The I.A. investigation which was supposed to stay internal, except somehow it got leaked. The articles that came out, the way they made us look. Then the editorials, so sarcastic—the taxpayers of the city actually paid people to bungle a crime scene that contained the only T case evidence ever discovered.

  "The sergeant, Wainy Waincroft, was demoted straightaway to patrolman. He quit. I was reassigned to a dead-end desk job. Everyone who was there that night was disciplined. They wanted to stigmatize us, make examples of us . . . and they did."

  Dad wipes away the sweat.

  "It hit me hard, your mother worse. You remember how she got. She couldn't take the stress, got so bad she couldn't bear to leave the house. I passed it onto her, I guess. Didn't mean to. You know that. But it just pushed her deeper into her depression. Then, what she did, Kay, I guess you could say it goes back to that night . . . though I think she was so ill she'd have probably done it anyway even if they'd promoted me, named me friggin' Commander of Patrol."

  He spreads his hands.

  "That's the story. Maybe now you wish you hadn't asked. How's it feel to know your old man could've been famous, the guy who cracked the T case? In law enforcement, if you're lucky, you get a chance like that once in a career. I got it and blew it . . . and here I am." He smiles. "In that way at least, I like to think, it was the best thing could've happened."

  He pulls me to him, kisses my forehead, then the top of my head. I tell him I want to photograph him. He's delighted, dodges into the bakery, swiftly changes into whites, plops on a baker's hat, grabs a wooden peel, steps back out.

  I pose him in front of City Stone Ground, the big window through which the huge brick oven can be seen. He beams at my lens, a dusting of flour on his cheek, a gentle smile on his lips. I fire at him twice. Click/Click! I catch him, as in an August Sander study: the quintessential Happy Baker.

  Everyone needs a coach. Mine is Maddy, also my friend, mentor, guru. I pay her for private coaching, which does not mean I go to her for lessons in technique. Basically what she does is look at my work, discuss it with me, critique it, coach me on how best to achieve my goals. Her insights are smart, penetrating, sometimes merciless. I've learned more from her about photography than from any teacher I've ever had.

  She lives on Alhambra in the Marina, a flat area of art deco-period homes and apartment buildings that abuts the Bay. She's seventy now, stopped taking photographs years ago, but the walls of her flat are covered with framed prints of her work, astonishing pictures taken on city streets, some dense with life, others soft, moody, under populated, all poignant, full of feeling and wondrous San Francisco light. Also hanging here are many fine portraits of local artists and writers, and the famous pictures she took of GIs during the Korean War, some of the darkest, most intense combat photographs ever shot. Don't look to Maddy's work for still lifes, whimsy, charm or arty "decisive moments." She's mistress of the direct, unblinking gaze, the gaze that, in her words, probes, strips, reveals.

  She greets me with a hug. A tall, thin, fragile white-haired woman, almost gaunt, she's visibly aged this past year. There're rumors she's ill, but she'll allow no discussion of her health. And even if Maddy has faded physically, her eyes are as keen as ever. People who interview her never fail to mention them. One journalist described "eyes so sharp you feel they should be registered as dangerous weapons."

  We sit in her living room. Expecting me, she has thoughtfully lowered the blinds in advance.

  "You're troubled, Kay." Her eyes probe mine. How well she knows me.

  I tell her about Tim.

  "Awful, terrible . . ." She takes my hand. "My heart aches for you, dear."

  She retires to her kitchen to make tea. When she's gone I look about. A snapshot of Maddy with her late husband, Harry Yamada, sits on the lamp table beside my chair. The picture was taken aboard an ocean liner sometime in 1951. They stand at the railing, young, beautiful and in love, arms about one another, staring into the lens. Behind them the port of Yokohama glitters in the dawn. Maddy is on her way to Korea for the first time to cover the war for Life.

  When she returns, I spread out the nudes of Tim. She fills my cup, examines them, then turns her attention to my proof sheets. It's proof sheets, she believes, that tell her most—how I work, what I was trying to do, where I made decisions good and bad.

  "I'm unhappy with them," I tell her.

  "You shouldn't be," she says. "There're some strong images here."

  "Not strong enough."

  She shakes her head. "You're wrong, Kay. I think you feel that way because all that's left of him is on film and for you now that's not enough."

  Perhaps she's right.

  "If these were just snaps," she goes on, "it would be a different story. But these are photographs and we don't make photographs of peopl
e to substitute for their presence. What you've brought me is a project, a session with a nude model. You're exploring him, exploring your relation to him by studying his face and body. You're even, in a way, making love to him . . . as you always do when you care about a subject. The caring here is strong, Kay. Very strong. These aren't abstract nudes. Oh, sure, a few times, you yield to the impulse to make designs. But really these are portraits of a very beautiful young man who happens to be unclothed. Interesting work. Significant. There's power here. Something tense, thrilling."

  She sits back. I'm grateful. Even if she's being kind, she has helped me understand what I did. Yes, that afternoon we took the nudes was a time of mutual exploration, perhaps as much of me by him as of him by me. There was magic between us, magic Maddy says I captured, magic I have no right now to deny.

  I thank her, we stand, embrace and then I leave. Walking home, I consider how lucky I am to have her for a friend.

  I call Hilly. The jerk who answers her line says she isn't there. As soon as I give my name, Shanley picks up.

  "What can we do for you today?"

  "Were there marks?" I ask.

  "Huh?"

  "On Tim's torso—marks, tattoos?"

  "What kinda question's that?"

  "You're saying there were?"

  "I'm not saying anything. I'm asking you a question."

  "I helped you. It's your turn now."

  "Turn to do what?"

  "What do you think?"

  "Look, Kay, maybe I'm missing something here. I'm a cop, you're a civilian. You came forward, as you rightly should. You wanna play detective, do it on some other guy's case. Not on mine. Got it?" He hangs up.

  It's twilight. I'm walking in North Beach . . . among tourists, stockbrokers, young people in love, sailors, Asian immigrants, commercial travelers seeking companionship, addicts, alcoholics, people nostalgic for the beat period, self-styled San Francisco poets.

  I'm thinking about none of that, thinking instead about color blindness and the many misunderstandings that surround it. The most common is that only boys suffer from it and that they inherit it from their mothers. In fact, the defective gene that produces most color deficiencies, such as red-green confusion, is far more likely to affect males and is carried by the mother on the X chromosome. If a female child's mother is a carrier and her father is color-deficient, both her X chromosomes may carry the defect and thus cause her to suffer from the malady.