He shakes his head. He can't stand hearing this. He gets up, starts pacing the room, flicks on the TV, snaps it off. I feel terrible. I've pushed him too far, broken our contract of silence.
"Jesus, Kay! I've tried not to think about it. People kill themselves—that's part of life. It's been hard enough to live with that without having to wonder why."
I make my voice gentle. "You have to deal with it. It'll always haunt you otherwise."
"But what you're saying, that she did it so I wouldn't—that's a heavy load to carry, darlin'. A very heavy load."
I have had to carry it too, I remind him. To be the daughter of a suicide is to have one leg kicked out from under you. You teeter, unsure of who you are and whether a gene of self-destruction isn't at work somewhere inside.
"Listen, Dad, I've got to ask you this. You're the best organized, most reliable man I know. How come you didn't secure that evidence or make sure it was secured by someone else?"
He throws up his hands. "Back to that! Give me a break, darlin'. Even the best players sometimes drop the ball. Remember, I'd just brought a guy back to life. I lost my concentration, screwed up. I'd never forgive myself if someone else got killed. Thank God the killings stopped. Maybe the perp freaked, realizing how close he'd come. Or. . ." He hesitates. There's a dreamy look in his eyes.
''What?"
"Just something that's crossed my mind over the years. Pretty ridiculous if you want to know."
"Tell me."
"Maybe the guy who tied up Sipple had nothing to do with the T case. It was a coincidence. Or maybe. . ."—he smiles at the notion—"the whole Sipple thing was just a plant."
It's dark when I leave. Outside I feel as I did after visiting Hale: relieved to be in open air.
I stop at a discount pharmacy on Sacramento, phone Joel at home, tell him I think we ought to see the four other cops who were there the night the Sipple evidence was lost.
Joel says he's been thinking the same thing. "But why only four?" he asks.
"Because I just saw the fifth," I tell him. "I'm still shaking from the encounter."
"Calm yourself, kiddo."
"How can I? He's my dad."
I recount the conversation. It helps to share the pain. When I come to Dad's last words, the possibility Sipple wasn't connected or was a plant, Joel points out how interesting it is the way both Hale and Dad dummy up when trying to explain the loss.
Walking up Hyde to my building, I spot someone lingering in the shrubbery that demarcates the Alice Marble Tennis Courts. No danger—I'm on the sidewalk and the hedge here is extremely thick. I pause beneath a streetlight and peer into the darkness. Silence as I scan the bushes, searching out the eyes of the voyeur. A rustling of branches, then a face appears amidst the leaves.
"What're you doing there, Drake?"
"Waiting for you to come home safe."
He stares at me, then disappears. I hear him as he retreats into the shadows and the brush.
In the elevator, ascending to my floor, I wonder how much Drake knows about me, whether he's aware of Sasha's late-night visits. Is he infatuated with me or merely my self-appointed guardian? In either case, I resolve, I must remember to draw my blinds.
I fall to sleep around eleven, only to be awakened after midnight by the delicate touch of Sasha's hand upon my breast. I've given him my key, urged him to sneak in on me, throw himself upon me, take me harshly like a beast. He acknowledges my fantasy but says he can't bring himself to fulfill it. Too fine a gentleman is Dr. C. Patel. Even so, I like his style of lovemaking—slow, thoughtful, ever so chivalrous.
I don't open my eyes, instead present myself to him half somnambulant, moaning beneath his expert ministrations. He leaves me hours later as stealthily as he came, his sandalwood smell upon my body, the delicious taste of him upon my lips.
In the morning my mailbox yields a letter addressed to Tim, forwarded by Gordon from Mail From Home. It's postmarked San Francisco with no return address. I open it; find a note handwritten on the stationery of The Sultan's Tent, a posh boutique hotel near Alamo Square. The handwriting's familiar. Then I remember the postcard from Florence:
Gorgeous One:
In town at last! Am here in my usual room awaiting your silken presence. I shall sing for four nights and then be ready for play. Please stay abstinent from the time you receive this. On the night of the seventeenth, present yourself here at nine P.M, announce yourself as "Carlo"…and violate me!
Your devoted
J
P.S. I know I can count on your fine discretion!
I dig out the old postcard. It was signed "Jerome. I pull my Chronicle out of the wastebasket, open it to the arts section, check the listings. This week the San Francisco Opera is presenting Tristan und Isolde. Among the scheduled singers: the American Wagnerian tenor, Jerome Tattinger.
I spend the morning developing and printing the roll I shot of Sho. With his sharp, triangular chin and modeled Native American features, he's got the looks to make it as a model. I select two of the images, one full-face, the other a strong profile with the wind raising his hair. I make him twenty prints of each, laborious work, but I want him to succeed, find a way to make a living so he'll no longer have to work the Gulch.
I try writing a note to Jerome Tattinger, something I can safely leave for him at the Opera box office. After three attempts I realize that nothing I can put on paper will be discreet yet clear enough to gain me an audience. There is, of course, an alternative: I can show up at The Sultan's Tent in place of Tim. Though not especially crazy about the idea, I don't rule it out.
Joel calls, excited. Hilly has left chalk marks signaling she wants a meet. According to our contact code, three-way meetings are to take place at ten p.m. at the Rough Rider bar the evening following the day the marks are left.
After dinner I walk down to the Gulch, looking for Sho to give him his head shots. I don't find him, instead come upon Slick in the classic one-foot-against-the-wall hustler's stance, which, suggesting loneliness, is so seductive.
Since he and Sho are buddies, I hand him the prints.
"Can I look at them, Bug?" When I nod he opens the envelope, gazes at the first shot and gasps. "You really make people pretty," he says, lightly touching his white eyebrows. He looks at me, then primps . . . as if I'm a mirror. "Could you make me pretty too?"
"You're already pretty."
"Yeah, like pretty . . . weird."
As someone who squinted a lot and couldn't see colors, I have no trouble imagining the kind of abuse Slick took as a kid. "Pink Eyes!" "Colorless!" The taunts were probably worse since to be albino is to wear one's affliction on one's face. Achromatopsia, at least, is a hidden malady.
I invite him for coffee. We walk a block to Roy's, the grungy place Crawf and I went after Shanley showed me Tim's head.
I ask Slick about his date with Sho and the man in the big Jaguar who picked them up.
"Guy's fussy, fussy." Slick pauses. "Tim used to go with him. I won't see him alone, tell you that."
"Because he's dangerous?"
Slick shrugs. "Any of Tim's old johns—I'm real careful now." He shows a sickly smile. "Don't wanna die."
Yeah . . . but suddenly I'm angry with Tim. So many things he didn't tell me, so many sides he didn't show—world-class opera singers, johns in Jaguars, a boyhood in a magician's troupe, a strange twin sister into bizarre sex for pay. I still want desperately to find out who killed him, yet now I wonder: did he really view me as a friend? I think he did, yet he held back so much . . . and that wounds me still.
When I arrive at Rough Rider, I find Joel alone nursing a beer, looking awkward in a new ill-fitting glossy black jacket.
I slip in beside him, peck his cheek, then check out the jacket. . . which, it turns out, isn't made of leather. "Vinyl! Oh, Joel!"
"Looks good, huh?"
"No. And it doesn't feel good either. Where'd you get it?"
"Discount place. Eighty-nine ninety-five."
> "Figures. Why'd you bother?"
"I don't want to look out of place."
I peer around. The joint is filled with tough-looking leathermen in motorcycle jackets with close-cropped hair and beards. Poor Joel! A Pulitzer prize, two decades as an investigative journalist, and he's still too cheap to buy himself a proper San Francisco disguise.
"Take it off before Hilly gets here," I advise, "unless you want her to take you for a dork."
Joel barely has his jacket off and stuffed behind his back when Hilly shows up in tight jeans and body-molded vest.
"Hi guys!"
Tonight she's wired, less interested in flaunting her orientation than providing us with information. "First thing yesterday morning we have a meeting in Captain Charbeau's office. Shanley, me, and a Lieutenant Vasquez from Vice Crimes."
"Luis Cruz Vasquez?" I ask.
Hilly nods. "Himself. So okay, the guys are talking. Being the junior detective in the room, I stay quiet. Shanley brings everyone up to speed, which is basically we got zilch, he's pursuing an a-john-did-it theory and I'm still working on connections to the old T case. At that point you'd think Vasquez would mention his connection . . . but he doesn't. Meantime Charbeau's getting antsy. After a couple minutes—this is why I signaled you guys—Charbeau says, like out of thin air: 'Why're we gang-banging this so hard?'
"We all look at him surprised. Shanley goes: 'What do you mean?' 'What I mean,' Charbeau says, 'it's just another cocksucker killing, right?' I go: 'Scuse me!' They all turn to me with these Oh!—we-forgot-she-was-in-the-room expressions."
I find myself liking this direct, indignant Hilly more than the canny ambitious woman I've been dealing with.
"Charbeau's black, tough as hell. Now he realizes he's offended me. He starts to backpedal. 'Vice Crimes wants to help out. They know the hustlers and johns. Lieutenant Vasquez asked to sit in on account of the gay felony-prostitution angle.' Figuring that's enough to keep me from filing a grievance, Charbeau adjourns the meeting.
"Immediately Vasquez takes off down the hail, me chasing after. 'Hey! Lieutenant, Lieutenant Vasquez, sir! Please, sir, a precious moment of your time.' I finally catch him at the elevators. He glares at me, annoyed. 'Yeah, Detective, what's on your mind?' 'Just this, sir—' I sputter. 'I know you were there the night Sipple was attacked and I was wondering if you had any thoughts you'd like to pass on. Like who beside Hale's task force knew the details of the T killer's M.O.?'
"Vasquez, he's six one, stares down at me like I'm some kind of bug. 'Why don't you move your fanny back to the squad room, Detective, before I have a talk with your captain.' Just then the elevator opens, he steps in, stares straight ahead like I don't exist and pushes the button for the executive floor."
It's a good vignette, Joel says, atmospheric too, but, he tells Hilly, it doesn't prove there's any kind of cover-up. A hustler homicide is bound to annoy the Homicide Division chief, if only because such cases are rarely solved. As for Vasquez, it's understandable he doesn't want to be reminded of what was undoubtedly the nadir of his career.
"Still," I point out, "he came to the meeting. If he wasn't interested why did he bother?"
"I don't know," Hilly says, "but I'll tell you this—if he'd used just two more words, like 'wiggle your juicy fanny back to the squad room,' I'd have brought him up on a sexual harassment charge."
After Hilly leaves, Joel, uncomfortable in the bar, offers to drive me home. In the car we discuss Hilly's story. He says she was right to call for a meeting; any documentation that police are dragging their feet only makes the Gulch story better.
Then, since we're going to be speaking to Vasquez, we discuss whether to reveal how much we know.
"Can't," Joel says. "Minute we do he'll know Hilly's the leak. He'll tell the others, they'll all be wary of her and Charbeau'll pull her off the case."
"So what do we do—act like we don't know he's aware?"
"Absolutely!" Joel smiles. "I'd love it if he lied."
We plan the interviews: I'll do the taping; Joe'll make the calls and set them up. After he drops me, I spend a couple of minutes walking the perimeter of Sterling Park, trying to catch a glimpse of Drake. No sign of him, so I enter my building, take the elevator up. The moment I step into the little vestibule on my floor, I realize something's wrong.
My door, which I always lock, is open an inch. I move toward it cautiously and, hearing nothing, push it open all the way. When I turn on my foyer lights I discover the lock's been jimmied. Then, peering inside, I see the mess.
Books and papers are scattered on the floor. All my living room furniture's upended. My telescope is broken like someone stamped hard on the tube. And there's a foul smell in the room. It takes me a moment to locate the source: a pile of excrement in the center of the rug, left by the invaders to show me their contempt.
I quickly check the other rooms. Nothing broken in the kitchen, but in my bedroom all the contents of my closets and drawers have been pulled out, ripped up and strewn. My underwear is in tatters, several pieces festoon my bedside lamp. My mattress has been gouged with a knife, my bedding ripped. In the bathroom I find my toilet clogged with condoms and tampons from the cupboard.
Sick in my gut, I check out my office. It's been hit the worst. My computer disks are gone, my computer screen is smashed, the keys of my keyboard have been pried loose and one of my screwdrivers has been jammed into the disk drive. My flat files have also been rifled, prints torn up, then piled on my light table, where they've been covered with some sort of tar. The flow chart I constructed has been ripped from the walls; all the pinned-up photographs are gone. In their place horrible words have been spray-painted onto the cork: DIE!CUNT!DIE! DIE STINKING BITCH. One of my self-portraits lies on the floor, eyes viciously cut from my face.
I rush to the darkroom. My enlarger's been vandalized, my enlarging lenses are missing, but the door of my negative safe is still intact. The one roll of negatives I was working with, the roll I shot of Sho, lies scrambled in the sink.
More insults spray-painted in here: SUCK ME WHORE. EAT SHIT & DIE. FUCKING CUNT EAT SHIT. The intruders' message is clear: We're brutal; we've violated you; to us your art is trash; our threats are sexual; our scatological attack is but a warning; next time we'll rip your body as we ripped your underwear.
I return to the living room, face the windows, cry out to the city, howl out my rage. I yell a few times, then, hands shaking, dial 911. Trying to keep my voice level, I tell the operator what's happened. She advises me not to touch anything and to wait downstairs if I'm afraid. Officers, she kindly assures me, are already on their way.
Still standing at my window amidst the debris, I look out at San Francisco. It appears so calm, still, beautiful behind the glass. The Bay too is still, reflecting the moon. Traffic on the bridges moves like molten metal. The Alcatraz light sweeps my face, paints my walls, moves on. Feeling frightened, alone, terribly vulnerable, I suddenly yearn for my father's embrace. Then, resolving to be strong, I decide that first thing in the morning I'll go out and buy myself a gun.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kim Coates and David Choy, a pair of good San Francisco cops, show up eight minutes later. Both in their twenties, one black, the other Chinese, they arrive while I'm still photographing the damage.
They analyze the means of entry (Kim: "Hate to tell you this, Ms. Farrow—your front door lock is crap.") and the pattern of destruction (David: "Probable reason they didn't break dishes is fear of alerting the neighbors."). Apparently the only decent lock I have is the one on my negative safe, bought to protect against fire, not burglary.
Andy Lamott, landlord and resident manager, is the next to appear. He and his brother inherited the building; Andy now occupies the penthouse floor. He's a dignified, sweet-natured guy in his forties, not above performing such menial chores as shining the brass in the elevator cab and sweeping the sidewalk out front. Awakened by the rumpus, he appears in jacket and tie to apologize for my ordeal. Building security, he pro
mises, will be immediately upgraded. He'll install a closed-circuit TV system, the motion-activated kind, to videotape all entrances and exits. And first thing in the morning he'll put a new security lock and alarm on my door.
"My brother and I, Ms. Farrow, are very proud of our building and equally proud of our distinguished tenants."
Such gallantry!
Sasha, turning up at midnight for fun and games, spots the patrol car out front. Storming in like a knight-on-a-white-charger, he's relieved to find me safe. He assists as, with Kim and David's permission, I scrape the shit off the living room rug. Then he flips my mattress and makes up the bed with fresh linen, while I gather up torn clothing, underwear, ruined prints and broken equipment into garbage bags. When Sasha's finished with the bed, he finds a can of touch-up paint in the kitchen and sets to work painting over the graffiti.
By this time the cops are finished. Kim tells me I'll be hearing from a detective in the morning.
"We take sexual threats of this kind very seriously," she says.
As soon as they're gone, I collapse into Sasha's arms.
"Soon, Kay," he says, wiping away my tears, "this ugliness will pass as water runs through sand."
Sasha, I decide, would make a terrific psychiatrist. I resolve to steer him toward this specialty away from his current preference, gynecology.
In the morning there's a sympathy note from the elderly couple who live downstairs. If this had happened in New York, I doubt anyone would have shown concern, but here in San Francisco we observe the old-fashioned amenities.
To forestall the intervention of another detective, I report the invasion to Hilly. And since it's legitimate police business, I phone her directly at the Hall of Justice.
She agrees there's an almost certain connection to the beating provoked by my follow-up on Tim's murder. Then Shanley comes on the line.
The Magician's Tale Page 21
