The Magician's Tale

by William Bayer

  The word sends a tremor across my chest.

  "We decided to keep it quiet. Might turn out to be important. Then, when I went through the T case file, naturally I looked for references. Nothing until I got to Sipple. Remember, he wasn't carved, he died in the hospital of a heart attack. But a couple of the cops who found him—Hayes and your dad—mentioned a strong-smelling soap. So I got this weird idea: Here we got a copycat T killer homicide with several things out of whack—paint instead of tattoos, a big number 'seven' lest we miss the point, and the torso washed with scented soap . . . which resembled what happened to Sipple, but to no one else. Remember what I was looking for? Insiders who knew the T killer's M.O. But here we got this similarity to Sipple, but not to any of the rest. So I start thinking maybe the leak didn't come from the T case task force, but from someone who was just in on Sipple. Then's when I went to see Vasquez. Maybe he'd have an idea on two, maybe he wouldn't, but I wanted him to know he hadn't intimidated me when he told me to move my fanny in the hall."

  Now I'm shaking. Could Hilly be right? What if Tim was killed by one of the five? Since it couldn't be Hayes or Dad, that leaves just three—Wainy, Ricky, Vasquez.

  "The lieutenant tells me to close the door, doesn't invite me to sit. He stares at me very cold. I guess the asshole thinks I've come to apologize. He hears me out. When I'm done, he keeps staring at me like there must be more. I stare right back. No way am I going to blink. So our little staring contest goes on awhile, then he asks if I'm an ambitious cop. Sure, I tell him, I'm ambitious . . . to clear my cases just like everyone else. I'm investigating a homicide and I've come to him for help. If he doesn't choose to assist, fine, I'll go on about my work."

  Hilly smiles. "I wasn't sure I had the balls to stand up to the guy. Now I'm wondering if standing up to him was so smart."

  "Why?"

  "Something scary about him. Way he looks at you like he's looking through you, through your eyes into your brain."

  Vasquez. Suddenly my Crane theory doesn't look so neat. I prodded Crane, threatened to ruin his reputation, so why wouldn't he want me beaten and my photographic files destroyed? But that doesn't prove he was Tim's killer. How could he have known about the soap?

  Vasquez knew. And then I remember something else, that Vasquez is in charge of Felony Prostitution. He could have known Tim. He could even have killed him. But why would Vasquez do that? It doesn't make sense.

  Hilly's still talking. Meantime my head's swelling with heat.

  ". . . word on the lieutenant is he takes protection money, that he's got deals going all over town. On Polk Gulch, here in the Tenderloin, on Capp Street in the Mission, the real bottom of the barrel." She peers at me. "You're looking queasy, Kay. You all right?"

  "Migraine," I lie. In fact, I feel as though the top of my head's about to blow off.

  "Anyhow, makes you wonder, Charbeau standing up for a guy like that, while I'm just trying to do my job." She shrugs, glances at her watch. "What d'you say we head over to the Buena Vista, scope out Rob?"

  We find him standing at the bar, enjoying a Scotch, displaying a victor's smile. No need to ask whether he got Knob's prints; he not only got them, he never touched the pictures himself, just handed the envelope to Knob, watched as he went through them, waited until he replaced them, then took the treasured envelope back.

  "Not a bad guy once you get to know him," Rob says. "Brute type, but with a certain savage charm."

  Hilly excuses herself; she wants to rush the photos to the fingerprint lab. I pick up the tab for Rob's drinks, then buy him dinner.

  "You won't have to see Knob again," I assure him.

  "I'm thrilled, Kay. Frankly, I was scared."

  "I never would have known," I tell him.

  Rob beams. "Must mean I'm a good actor."

  Sasha spends the night. It's been days since we've seen each other. He's been on duty and I've been busy exploring the oddly connected trails of my life. Tim, Dad, Mom, the Judge, Ariane . . . Knob, Crane, Vasquez ... and perhaps other strands I may be too close to or too blind to see.

  Sasha, as it happens, bathes with perfumed soap, which imbues his skin with the aroma of sandalwood. I ask him why he likes it.

  "Don't you?" he asks.

  "Of course. Just curious why you chose it."

  "Actually, I never much liked scented toiletries," he says. We're lying side by side naked in my bed, in contact from our shoulders to our calves. "Shaving soaps, men's fragrances, lotions. People give them as gifts. Usually I take one sniff, then pass the stuff on. But one day. . ." He stops. "This is embarrassing."

  I nudge him. "Go on!"

  "A lady I was seeing—"

  "Lady?"

  "She was. But so as not to offend you, we'll call her a woman. Anyway, I was staying over one night."

  "As you're accustomed to do."

  He nods. "And in the morning when I took a shower and used her soap it was scented with sandalwood and I liked it very much. So, though I never saw this lady, this woman, again—"

  "As was also your custom."

  He laughs. "Although we stopped seeing one another, having failed to fall in love, I did in fact fall in love with her bath soap . . . and have been using it ever since."

  "Great story, Sasha!"

  "Glad you like it, Kay. And I hope someday you too will look back and recall receiving a similar gift from me—a scent sniffed, a dish tasted, perhaps some little trick I've taught."

  "Bed trick?"

  "Wouldn't that be fine?"

  "You're a great lover, Sasha. You know you are. I've learned a lot from you. Felt, you know, special things. I hope we're going to have a future together."

  "We will," he says, firmly.

  I turn, plant my elbow, prop my head on my fist, so I can look straight into his dreamy eyes.

  "Here's my secret, Sasha. I'm speaking seriously now. My fondest wish is to see colors. And, surprise!—some nights with you I actually do. Oh, not real colors, of course. Sadly, that's not possible. But the equivalent, the sense of colors. It's hard to explain."

  "I love what you're saying."

  "It's like a flowering. Objects take on a different dimension. There's an unexpected depth, a richness ... which is what I've always thought colors must endow. I dream more vivid dreams, see more brilliantly. The light opens up, hues are revealed."

  I turn to lie on my back, stare up at the ceiling. "You see, I have ways of knowing colors—from music, passages in Wagner, Berlioz, Scriabin, Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov. From literature too—the greens in Walt Whitman, golds and yellows in Gerard Manley Hopkins, Conrad's reds and blues. I also know colors from the great painters. I look at the paintings and imagine. . . Poussin's blue, Degas's green, van Gogh's yellow, Rembrandt's brown."

  He leans over me to kiss my eyes.

  "My mom was a music teacher," I continue. "She tried to teach me colors via correspondences with sounds—the chromatic scale, orchestral color, how harmony could be thought of as a kind of color-mixing too. We'd listen to records. She'd make analogies between the sounds of the different instruments and the intensities of different hues. The yellow sounds of the clarinets, violets of the oboes, reds of the trumpets. Crimson flutes. Dark blue cellos. Aquamarine violas. Pure blue violins. We'd spend hours listening. I tried to memorize the correspondences. The keys too. She told me D Major was purple, D Minor was tawny, A Major was green. In the end, unfortunately, her lessons didn't take. She was so disappointed I didn't have a good ear. Later she took my artistic ambitions as rejection. Music, you see, was such a perfect medium for a color-blind girl. She thought I went to art school just to spite her. She was wrong, of course. I found my way there, discovered black-and-white photography, a way of making pictures in which the line and shape take precedence over the field."

  I turn back to him. "Still, I wish I could have pleased her, Sasha. At least learned from her, learned the colors."

  "You're not blind, Kay."

  "Not at all. My whole life's
about seeing—looking, peering, selecting, creating images. And who knows? If I could see colors, most likely my colors wouldn't be the same as yours. Scientists say it can take but the slightest difference in a chromosome, a single amino acid, to change the way a person perceives a hue. But never mind! I'm talking about the colors I do see. Sometimes I see them in my mind via sound and touch and smell, but the best time for me, the time I see them most beautifully, is when the two of us make love. All of which is my way of telling you, Sasha, that this woman already has a story to tell, for she has already received your gift. And—need I add?—still longs for more. . . ."

  Midmorning I phone Dad: "You okay?"

  "Sure, darlin'. You?"

  "I'm doing good."

  "Glad to hear it. What we talked about—that was bound to hurt."

  "It cleared the air. Thanks for sharing it with me." I pause. "We'll probably try and dig up the evidence now. Unless you object."

  A long pause. "Go ahead."

  "You're sure?"

  "Do what you have to do."

  "Billy can take the rap. Joel says his widow won't be hurt."

  "Poor Billy!"

  "Poor you! But don't worry—we won't throw you to the wolves. Not Ricky or Wainy either. No guarantees for Vasquez."

  "A word of advice, darlin'."

  "Please?"

  "Go for it, but watch out for Vasquez. He plays dirty, a dirty game."

  The phone rings. It's Caroline Gifford at Zeitgeist.

  "You won't believe this, Kay. I just got off a call from Sarah Lashaw. Says she wants to buy thirty or so prints, a representative selection of your work. Wants to come by tomorrow, make choices." Caroline pauses. "Isn't that fab?"

  "No, sorry, Caroline, it's not."

  "Hey, girlfriend, this is business! You can't refuse a serious buyer. We're talking twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars here."

  "I understand, but, see, Lashaw isn't buying, she's bribing, and I'm not in the bribe-taking business. Trust me on this?"

  A silence. "Oh, I trust you all right. But I gotta tell you, Kay—sometimes it really hurts."

  I keep thinking of Ariane: Where is she now? To what extent was she involved in Tim's death? I've talked to David deGeoffroy twice since Tim's funeral, and each time he asks after her with special tenderness. I'm still convinced I haven't heard the whole story from him and will only learn the rest from her. . . if I'm fortunate enough to find her.

  I think about the Lovsey twins going through adolescence on their own, and then the forces that must have driven them to work the street. I think of their deft hands and brilliant minds, their interchangeability, androgyny and charm, their love of juggling, tumbling, pulling coins and scarves out of orifices, most of all of the bravery with which they faced the world. They never allowed themselves to feel degraded no matter the disdain in which their work was held. Magician-nighthawk purveyors of lust, gorgeous sensuous objects of desire, they entered the dark subconscious of the city, maintaining their dignity in the face of all its sleaze and scorn.

  I walk into an old-fashioned professional building on lower Market, the kind with a cage elevator and echoing lobby. An elderly attendant with dragon breath operates the apparatus. The cage jerks and trembles its way up, depositing me on the eighth floor after numerous false stops.

  The corridor here is lined with doors with bubble-glass panels bearing the names of tenants. Aromas ooze out of open transoms—mouthwash from the waiting room of Lawrence Fisher, D.D.S.; cigar smoke from the suite of Courter & Lee, Admiralty Insurers; stale coffee and pizza from the hole-in-the-wall workplace of Susan Marzik & Associates, Private Investigations. But from my destination, the law office of J. F. Judd, Esq., Criminal Defense, there is no smell, no essence, no odor at all.

  The receptionist, a middle-aged battle-axe with a bitter mouth, gives me the once-over as she snatches away my card. Five minutes later a squat bald man with canny eyes waddles out to greet me.

  "Hi! I'm Judd," he says, escorting me to his office. "Thanks for dropping by."

  "You were expecting me?"

  He gestures me to the client chair. "I figure you came to settle Lovsey's account."

  I examine him as he sits behind his desk. Late thirties, flashy tie, flabby jowls, grossly overweight.

  "That's not why I'm here," I tell him.

  "Look, the client's deceased. I'm open to settlement."

  I'm not prepared for this, but what the hell? I offer him two hundred dollars.

  While Judd thinks it over, I peer around. His office is a den of files, lawbooks, briefs and, on the walls, satiric Daumier barrister cartoons. He is, I quickly understand, small-time. No big murder cases here, just penny ante stuff—drug possession, solicitation, petty theft.

  When I turn back he's studying my face.

  "Beaten up, weren't you?"

  Jesus! "Does it still show?"

  He shakes his head. "Not at all."

  "Then how—"

  "Tim told me. Wanted me to nail the son of a bitch. I told him I'm a defense attorney, not a prosecutor, his friend should go to the cops. That was the last time we spoke. A day or two later he was killed." Judd shrugs and shakes his head.

  Suddenly I feel heat rising from my chest to my head, the same sensation I felt when Hilly told me about Vasquez. Ariane—it had to be! But who beat her up and why? Knowing I must anchor myself, I think of Rita's admonishment in aikido: Find your center, Kay. Root yourself.

  "It wasn't me he was talking about."

  "You said—"

  "I was beaten afterwards." Judd raises his eyebrows. "Do you remember exactly what Tim said?"

  Judd neither nods nor shakes his head, just continues to stare, waiting for me to explain.

  "The night he was killed we were supposed to meet. He wanted my advice. He was upset, scared. Maybe what he told you had to do with what he was going to tell me."

  Judd turns away. "Attorney-client privilege extends after death."

  "But you already told me some of it. I'm just asking for the details."

  He widens his eyes, body language for What's in it for me? I understand him perfectly: for chump change attorney Judd would sell his soul.

  I make him an offer: "I'll settle Tim's account."

  "In full?"

  I nod. "Providing you tell me everything."

  In fact, $1,250 will empty out my bank account. But then, I remember, I just turned down a fortune from Sarah Lashaw. I reach into my camera bag, whip out my checkbook, turn on my micro tape recorder at the same time. I write Judd a check, show it to him, then pull it back.

  He smiles. "You wouldn't stiff me now, would you, Ms. Farrow?"

  "Is that what you're used to—getting stiffed?"

  "Unhappily, yes."

  "You'll get this when you tell me everything, from the first time you met Tim Lovsey to the last time you spoke."

  He studies me a moment, swivels around in his chair, starts to talk. It isn't an uninteresting story. Tim was picked up on Polk Gulch, got into a car, took a hundred bucks to receive a blow job from an undercover cop. A second after Tim accepted the money, the cop put him under arrest. Then it was off to the Hall of Justice, with a little conversation en route. What Tim needed, the cop advised, was a good lawyer to settle his case. When Tim said he didn't know any lawyers, the cop recommended Judd, then stopped so Tim could phone him from a booth.

  "Police officer scam," Judd explains. "Arrest a guy, tell him he needs a lawyer, steer him to one who knows how to deal. Everyone's protected—the cop gets paid off, the lawyer gets his fee, the arrestee gets his freedom and can't claim later he was solicited for a bribe."

  "How much?"

  "In this case five hundred. I negotiated it down from a grand."

  "For which you billed him twelve-fifty."

  "Of which my cut was seven-fifty. A fair fee, believe me. I was called out of bed."

  "You're saying Tim never paid you?"

  Judd shrugs. "He was a hustler. What'd you expect
?"

  I don't believe him. He wouldn't have listened to Tim's story about the beaten girl if he hadn't already been paid. I very much want to ask the arresting officer's name, but decide to hold off till I hear the rest.

  "No jail, no bail, no court appearance," Judd continues. "The matter was privately settled. Then, like I mentioned, last month Tim calls me about this girl, says she's been badly beaten up. He's pissed, wants me to represent her, bring criminal charges against the guy, sue him, the works. When I tell him I don't do that kind of work, he says he'll find someone who does. Next thing, I read in the newspaper he's been killed."

  "Did he say who beat the girl?"

  Judd shakes his head.

  "I think he did," I tell him. "And when you heard the name you got scared."

  "Think whatever you like, missy. Twelve-fifty only buys so much."

  Missy! What an asshole! "Well, you got me there, Mr. Judd," I tell him. "For me twelve-fifty's a stretch.'' I search his eyes. "It was a rich man beat the girl, wasn't it?"

  Judd shrugs. Does he know I'm bluffing? Did he sell the news of Tim's intentions and by so doing get Tim killed? Is he such a cheap piece of crud that even after collecting on that, he sent the bill for twelve-fifty figuring he could squeeze it out of Tim's estate?

  "You're not going to tell me. I understand. At least give me the name of the cop."

  Judd smiles. "Too sweet a deal. I'm not about to mess that up."

  "Fine." I stand. "Then you don't get paid." I tear up my check, sprinkle the pieces on his desk.

  He opens his center drawer, brushes the pieces into it. "You're a welsher, missy, but your check taped back together'll be enough to persuade a small claims judge."

  "Fuck you! You're the one welshed. And now I'm going to fry your ass."

  "What're you talking about?"

  "Friend of mine, an investigative journalist, is going to turn you inside out—bank accounts, every case you ever tried or settled, who your friends are, which ones are cops. A sleazebag like you—something's bound to turn up. By the time we're done with you, you'll be disbarred."