The Magician's Tale

by William Bayer

  "Sometimes I had trouble along the way. I'd been on TV a lot, people recognized me, many knew that I'd been hounded out of the Department. 'What do you want, Hale? We don't have to talk to you—you're not a cop anymore.' But I kept at it, kept smiling and talking, till I made the right connections. Ended up with my own private intelligence net. Pretty sweet, huh?"

  Actually I have some difficulty imagining this crusty old man haunting a bunch of gay bars. Still I admire him for his persistence, even as I'm appalled by his lack of self-knowledge. "Hounded out" seems a pretty tame phrase; "found out" would be more accurate. But then, I remember, intimate self-knowledge is not a requisite for being a cop.

  Hale tells us how, over time, he came to view three individuals as suspects. One had a particular fondness for tattoos, another had a medical background, which meant training in dissection, the third had neither tattoo nor butchering experience but was definitely handsome, and twice Hale followed him to The Gryphon where he picked up and took home cute young Robbie Sipple types.

  Over the years Hale gave up on the handsome man; interviews with his pickups convinced him he was sane and gentle. The doctor died of AIDS in 1988, which left him with the tattoo freak.

  "He was legendary in the tattoo underground," Hale tells us. "Then around the time of the Sipple incident, he just cold dropped out. Wasn't seen again. People said he moved away." Hale shrugs. "I've got his prints. I hope someday to make a match."

  Which brings him, he says, to the second area he's willing to discuss—the missing evidence from Sipple's basement flat.

  "When I was in charge I pulled the files of every man there that night, cops and paramedics alike. No matter what anyone says, I never thought that evidence was lost."

  "Way I heard it," I tell him, "you called the cops in and told them they were assholes."

  Hale smiles. "Which doesn't mean I thought they were. One of them took that material, and at least one other knows who did."

  "You're talking cover-up," Joel says.

  "Conspiracy's more like

  "Conspiracy to do what?"

  "Obstruct justice. What other damn kind of conspiracy could it be?"

  Not only Hale's words but the gleam in his eyes tell me we're in paranoid country now, a murky land full of fogs and mists, where shadowy figures with nefarious aims scheme to thwart the honorable process of The Law. Frame-ups, hidden relationships, secret agendas are at work. Sometimes, of course, the mist parts, the fog lifts and then, for an instant, you catch a glimpse of the master plot. Conspiracies are never simple. To penetrate one you must be as devious and sly as the conspirators. And sometimes, of course, a cigar is just a cigar, or, as in the case of Torsos, incompetent cops are merely incompetent cops.

  "If someone covered up," Joel says, "there had to be a reason."

  Again a gleam in the eye accompanied by a knowing nod and the sweet tight-lipped smile of the insider. "You're saying a cop did these killings?"

  Hale shrugs. "You said it, not me."

  "Come on, Inspector," Joel goads, "tell us what you think."

  "What I think isn't important. Only what I can prove."

  I recall Hilly's notion, that only an insider on the T case could have known how to mark Tim's body.

  "Seems to me," I tell him, "you've got conflicting theories: a tattoo freak into cute young men who suddenly dropped out, and a cop who got rid of evidence because maybe it implicated himself."

  This time the nod's even more knowing, the tightlipped smile verging on a smirk.

  "Let's just say that what may appear conflicting to you can, upon investigation, be resolved."

  The way Hale bites off these final words tells us he'll have no more to say. He leads us from his inner chamber back into his office. Closing the bookcase doors, he turns to me.

  "I've been to see your dad."

  He lightly drops this news, perhaps knowing it will fall upon me like a bomb.

  "Several times. He's always cordial. Makes a damn good loaf of bread." Hale nods toward the ceiling. "Alice says it's the best bread other side of the Bay."

  "What did you see him about?" I ask, trying to keep my voice level, disguise the feelings roiling within.

  "The bondage hood. He had a good look at it. I thought he might remember how it was made. He was helpful, made some sketches, even accompanied me to a couple custom leather shops where we looked at hoods with similar features."

  So strange, I think, Dad didn't mention this . . . but then I had a feeling after our lunch that he'd left a great deal out.

  "Earlier you said you thought he knew who lost the evidence."

  Hale grins. "Did I say 'lost'?"

  His coy little smiles annoy me, but I refrain from displaying irritation. Instead, feigning loss of interest, I turn my attention back to Joel. Hale's a control freak, a trait that undoubtedly served him well as he moved up the ladder at S.F.P.D. One thing, I know, a control freak can't abide is the notion he no longer dominates the room.

  I figure Joel, being intuitive, will understand what I'm up to. But he still has questions of his own.

  "What about the new case?" he asks.

  "Copycat," Hale snaps.

  "A copycat's got to know what to copy."

  "The body painting? We had tattoo experts in. Word on the designs got around."

  "So why did the killer use paint this time, and not tattoo?"

  "Tattooing's difficult. You have to have tools and technique."

  "Is it really so difficult, Inspector? Convicts do it without special tools. There're books that tell you how."

  "It takes time."

  "The new killer had time enough to cut the man up."

  "We looked into that. An experienced butcher can cut up a human being in less than half an hour."

  "Then why the number 'seven'?"

  "An attempt to divert attention."

  "Is that really what you think? If tattooing's so crucial to your theory—"

  "Who says it is?"

  "Excuse me—didn't you say so?"

  "There're things I said and a lot I didn't. You came here with something interesting so I returned the favor."

  Joel shrugs. "Then perhaps the real story isn't the old unsolved case. It's the retired cop who refuses to give up."

  "How you play it's up to you," Hale says . . . but I can tell he's pleased.

  Ending on a note of mild flattery—that's Joel's technique. He's not the sort to go for broke in one interview, risking refusal when he requests a second. Rather he's the methodical journalist who comes back again and again, building trust while each time subtly prying out a little more.

  Out on the street, away from Hale's oppressive basement, I breathe in, then deeply exhale. The air here may not be so heady, but at least it's clear. The air down in paranoid country was thick and close.

  We get back into Melvin. I study Hale' s house as we pull away. It may not be Gothic, may lack a turret, but there's something sinister about a split-level on a sunny day with all the shades pulled and drapes drawn tight.

  Joel doesn't speak until we're back on the freeway.

  "You know, kiddo—whenever I'm with someone like that I find myself drawn in. But once I get away and think about what he said, it always starts sounding dumb."

  "Hale creates a force field," I say. "Inside it we're his prisoners."

  "Catch the smell in that kitchen?"

  "Old Alice hates him. She burns his toast."

  Joel laughs. "Takes an expert to burn toast, toasters being more or less infallible. Still, I wonder . . ." Joel strokes his goatee.

  "What?"

  "Why he did it?"

  "The letters?"

  Joel nods. "He had everything going for him, was at the peak of his career. Then he threw it all away for nothing."

  "The old Greek formula for tragedy," I suggest. "Arrogant pride, a reckless act . . . nemesis."

  "Like he willed his own downfall."

  "He was a detective, Joel. He knew typewriters lea
ve a signature, yet he went ahead and used his own. Perhaps unconsciously he wanted to fall off the high wire. Couldn't take the pressure. Better to work the T case alone from a secret basement room than face his people every day knowing sooner or later he'd have to admit he couldn't solve it."

  Joel shakes his head. "Too rich for me, kiddo. Think of his disgrace, getting caught writing letters praising himself, ending his career as a laughingstock."

  "But what if he does solve it? Then who has the last laugh?"

  "Don't kid yourself. It's been fifteen years. How the hell's he going to solve it now?"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Joel drops me at Third near the Museum of Modem Art. I walk up Howard Street to the sharply angled doorway of Zeitgeist Gallery.

  Zeitgeist presents itself as a showcase for young cutting-edge photographers. In L.A. it would be one of many; here it stands alone. The pristine white floor, white walls and ceiling Erector-set lights give it a drop-dead New York look.

  The current show is of new work by Clury Bowen, huge color prints of masses of entwined yarn which, needless to say, I fail to appreciate. I may be the most conservative artist on the Zeitgeist roster, being more of a photojournalist than the kind of photographer who sets up scenes. The closest I came to that was in my Watcher series, for which I dressed a store mannequin in trench coat and fedora, then posed him in shadowy doorways along the Tenderloin. Shot from behind this "watcher," my pictures of raw street life were imbued with a noirish quality people liked. I sold many more Watcher prints than prints from Transgressions.

  I find Zeitgeist's owner, Caroline Gifford, in her office off the gallery floor, bent over a light box studying transparencies. We smooch air. Caroline's dark hair is so thick it forms a cave around her face. She's plump, maternal, her eyes soft and mellow.

  "Sorry I missed Clury's opening," I lie. "That Guardian review was mean." Caroline winces. "I'm here to show solidarity.'

  "Sweet Kay. Clury'll be thrilled!"

  In fact, like most artists I know, I'm as guilty of schadenfreude as the next. Also I don't get it about Clury's work. Why photograph the yarn? Why not just hang it directly on the wall?

  Caroline and I spend a few minutes dishing art gossip—who got a grant, who didn't, who made a big sale, the sad tale of the local sculptor whose entire New York show went unsold. This gives me a chance to ask about various prominent Bay Area collectors, which in turn enables me to drop the name Sarah Lashaw. Caroline mentions she's been in the gallery several times.

  "My show?" I ask.

  "Not the opening. I'd remember. But maybe later on." Caroline grins. "There's a reason you're asking, Kay?"

  I nod. "She had me over for lunch, boasted she'd seen the show, made a big point about having signed the book."

  "Easy enough to check."

  Caroline sends her assistant scurrying to the storage room to fetch the Transgressions guest book from the files. The girl, blotchy-faced and bony, returns with a spiral-bound filler, the kind Caroline inserts into the handmade leather portfolio she keeps with her price lists on the gallery desk.

  Caroline opens it, starts reeling off the names of prominent local citizens—CEOs, socialites, successful venture capitalists. Caroline, in addition to her excellent eye, is a genius at cultivating collectors. She sees herself as a cultural ambassadress committed to ending visual arts provincialism in San Francisco. Photographs, she exhorts her wealthy friends, are art, and, isn't it great, they're also cheap!

  "Ta-da!" Caroline shows me the signature: Sarah Lashaw, St. Helena. "Now own up—she wants to buy your work?"

  "She tried to. I refused,"

  "Kay! Get real! If you can get some of your pictures onto her walls, we'll have a real breakthrough!"

  "Forget it," I tell her. "What she wants to buy she wouldn't dare expose."

  I taxi to City Stone Ground. Dad's out, but expected back soon. While I wait I hang out with the jovial Russian staff, and enjoy the great aroma, far less intense now than during baking time but still, for me, ambrosia.

  Tamara, a stout, middle-aged Georgian woman, wants me to persuade Dad to put in a special oven so she can make her native crackling flat bread.

  "They will sell, Kay. I promise. Like how does Jack say? 'Hot cakes'. No?"

  I take some pictures of the crew. A few late shoppers appear. When the last of the day's bread is sold, Peter, Dad's second, posts a sign, SORRY, NO MORE BREAD, on the door.

  A few minutes later Dad appears. He's pleased to find me. I get a big hug, the staff gets thanks, he sends them home, locks up, then we walk together to his apartment.

  He moved here a year after Mom took her life. He couldn't bear to stay on in the house where she had shot herself. He found a two-bedroom flat in a four-story rent-controlled building on Cherry Street, the second bedroom permanently reserved, he said, for me. In fact, having already flown the nest, I never once slept there. A few years later, after City Stone Ground started bringing in money, Dad bought the building, waited patiently for the resident families to move out, renovated the flats and is now a proud live-in landlord.

  We sip vodka in the bay of his living room overlooking the pines of the Presidio. The room has a spare masculine look—huge TV, leather maroon recliners with seats worn smooth. No trace here of Dad's longtime girlfriend, Phyllis Sorenson. I've never understood whether they sleep here or at her place. Phyllis, a real estate top-producer, is fifteen years younger than Dad, an aggressive dyed-blond painted-nails divorcée. She finds me scruffy; I find her over groomed. We don't get along too well.

  "I saw Hale this morning."

  I drop the bomb just as Dad settles in. I watch him carefully. As expected, he twitches his neck against his collar.

  "Joel Glickman—you remember Joel, Dad?" He twitches again. "He set the interview up. Hale lives over in Oakland. His wife keeps the drapes pulled during the day. Whenever she leaves a room she shuts the door. His den, down in the cellar, is set up like a T case temple."

  "Jesus!"

  "He told me he's been to see you several times." Dad nods. "When we had dim sum that day, you didn't mention you'd made up."

  Dad sniffs. "That what he says we've done?"

  "He says you've been helpful to him, especially on the bondage hood."

  "Helpful doesn't mean we're friends." Dad shuts his eyes. "Hale's a nut."

  "A smart nut," I correct. "Sly, canny, the kind who can solve a tough case."

  "Oh, he was good. In his prime, probably the best. But it's been a long time since he slipped."

  "He's still obsessed with Torsos."

  "I'm not surprised... since it ruined him."

  "He thinks you know who took that hood from Sipple's."

  Dad sniffs again. "Any chance did he mention the taker's name?" I shake my head. "Easy to make an accusation, Kay. A little harder to prove it."

  "You don't deny it."

  "That's what you want?"

  Again he twitches, as if to free his neck from a too tight collar. It's a familiar gesture, one I remember well from my childhood. He'd do it whenever he got upset. I wonder if he does it now because, entangled in a subterfuge, he imagines his neck caught in a noose.

  "Investigating me, are you?"

  "I'm investigating the brutal murder of my friend. And since the T case is connected and you were part of that . . . well, your name keeps coming up." I meet his eyes. "Please, Dad—I need your help."

  He drinks down half his glass, sets it on the floor. "Take it from an old cop—there's not a chance in hell the person who did in Tim is the original T killer."

  "They say he knows things only cops knew at the time."

  "There were lots of cops and it's been lots of years." He looks at me. "You want to know who lost that hood? Talk to the people who were there that night. Maybe now someone'll admit it."

  "Waincroft, Hayes, Puccio, Vasquez."

  His eyes enlarge. He's stunned I know their names.

  "Still see any of them?"

  "Ru
sty sees Vasquez sometimes. He's the only one of us survived in the Department. He's a lieutenant now, some kind of division chief. Truth is I try to avoid them."

  "'Still bitter?"

  "It hurt to be driven out."

  "You weren't dismissed."

  He shakes his head. "They made retirement the only option. Funny thing—I never much liked being a cop, but I didn't like being forced to give it up." He smiles. "Even though it was probably the best thing could've happened to me, I wanted to make the decision in my own sweet time."

  I know it's time to leave, that if I stay any longer we'll get into something neither of us can deal with. But as much as I want to go I can't. Rather I feel compelled to bring up the issue that, being unspoken so many years, makes us both uncomfortable.

  He broaches it first. "The other day I told you I thought the end of my police career pushed your mother to—" He pauses. "I imagine you've been giving that some thought."

  I admit to him that I have.

  "I shouldn't have said it. Regretted it soon as I did. See, Kay—I'm convinced sooner or later she would have killed herself. I'm certain it had nothing to do with me."

  "Oh, Dad! Don't you see?"

  "See what, darlin'? Tell me."

  "The way she did it, like a ruined cop. It's as if she did it instead of you—like she thought maybe you might do it, so to keep you from doing it she did it herself."

  "That's crazy!" He's twitching continuously now. His eyes, I notice, are moist. "I wasn't corrupt! I wasn't disgraced! I had no damn reason to eat my gun."

  "Course not! But what if she thought so? You said she was depressed. Maybe she did it as an act of love, thinking if she did, then you wouldn't have to. In that way, you see, she did it for you."