I could feel myself being drawn into his words. I didn't completely understand everything he was saying. But there was something else going on as he spoke. It was as if there was a song under the words that I could almost hear, but not quite. I wanted to get in closer so that maybe I could hear what he was saying.
"So, I'm sitting up here and I'm thinking. And you keep coming to my mind. And I wonder about you and that big ape doing"—he shrugged—"whatever it is that two fellas do who know what they're doing as I'm sure you do, doncha know. And I wonder how long this particular slice of the American freedom pie is gonna last for you. That's got me worried, doncha know."
That caught my attention. I sat up and asked, "What do you mean?"
He waved me away and then grabbed the second bottle. As he began to unwrap the foil over the cork, he said, "I think you know exactly what I mean. The way things are going, it's gonna get hot up there in San Francisco before much longer." He began to pull on the cork. "You're not always gonna have the run of the streets like you do now. It's like when the Barbary Coast ended. Those temperance types come in, doncha know." The cork popped as he said that and he somehow managed to get the little bit of champagne that bubbled over into his glass.
He tilted the bottle in my direction and raised his thick eyebrows. I shook my head. I still had almost half a glass.
"Wouldn't ya know, they come in and they clean up the town. That Ginsberg kid told me they're trying to close down most of the places where the Beats hang out. And the queers. And the dykes."
I nodded. Kenneth Wilcox, my lawyer, handled a lot of cases where men and women had been arrested in police raids. Over the last year, or so, there had been more and more of that going on.
He tilted the glass and savored the drink for a moment. "This is some good drink here. Reminds me of the old days." He looked out the window, as the setting afternoon sun began to dip below the window sill.
Right then, Carter walked in the door.
"All right, son?" asked Henry.
Carter nodded and said, "I left it right at the bottom of the hill but out of the road."
"Good. I'm hopin' the two of you will stay for a little light supper. I don't wanna keep you too long because that drive back north is hard at night. But stay long enough to have some of that canned goose liver pate with some crackers. And some of that Stilton cheese Ronald packed up. That's as good a dinner as you'll ever get anywhere as far as I'm concerned."
. . .
"Sure you won't have any?" He spread some of the brown goo out of the can on a cracker. He took a bite of half of it, spewing crumbs all over. He then popped the other half in his mouth and swallowed it without chewing.
We'd both politely declined his offer of whatever the canned stuff was and the strange cheese that smelled weird. Neither of us knew what either were and I had a feeling that Carter, in particular, wouldn't like the way it all tasted.
"Outside of a good charcuterie in Clichy, where I used to live, this canned stuff is pretty tasty. I bet there's someone in San Francisco who knows how to make the good stuff, doncha know."
Carter nodded and said, "There's a store called City of Paris. I think they sell that in the basement. It looks like a Parisian street down there."
Henry laughed. "How would you know, you big ape?"
Carter sat up and looked at the man for a long moment. "Well, we spent a few days in Paris back in January."
Henry waved him away. "A few days? To know Paris, you have to live there for years. It's like San Francisco. It has these unique little neighborhoods. And you never know what you'll find hidden away. It's a great place to be broke because the French don't care. It's not like here, where the poor are treated as failures." Looking over at me, he said, "But I don't think that's ever gonna be a problem for you, Nick, now is it?"
I shrugged. "I'd be happy to give all my money away if I thought it would do any good."
Henry nodded thoughtfully. "Why don't you?"
"I'm trying." Since '49, I'd set up two foundations with big chunks of the fortune I'd inherited from my Great-Uncle Paul.
"How much you got in your wallet?"
"Dunno."
Beckoning at me with his right hand, he said, "Come on. Show me."
I shrugged and pulled out my wallet. I stood up, walked over, and dumped out the contents. Henry picked up the bills and counted them all out. "You got nine hundred and thirty-seven bucks here. That's more than I've seen in two or three years, doncha know."
"What about the sales of your books in Europe?" asked Carter.
Henry nodded as he played with the money. "Yeah. Well, that's a long story. My publisher is holding some francs for me. The way the currency is going down the toilet, it ain't worth much now. But I get by. Always have, always will."
I walked back over to my chair, sat down, and said, "You keep that."
He looked at the money and then made it into a fan. Waving it around his face, he said, "I like the smell of money. Dollars smell different than francs. Hard to describe the difference." He looked at the money and plucked a hundred out. He set that to one side and then made a stack out of the rest. Leaning over, he handed that to Carter. "I'll keep a hundred. You take all this. What am I gonna do up here with nine hundred bucks? And all this food?" He laughed, stuck the hundred inside one of the books on the table, and smeared more of the brown goo onto a cracker.
. . .
"You two need to get going. It's dark and it's a long drive to San Francisco, doncha know."
I said, "Well, we're only going as far as Carmel tonight."
He was still sitting at the table, right where he'd been for the last couple of hours as he'd told us all about Paris and living in Big Sur. "Still. I'm just about talked out. But, before you go, I wanna get to the point of why I think you're here."
I looked over at Carter who said, "I heard you sold watercolors. I wanted to buy some."
Henry waved his right hand at Carter, as if dismissing the idea. "No, you don't. That's just how you got here. You never really know why anything happens until you're in the middle of it and, even then, you don't have a fuckin' clue until it's all over, doncha know." He leaned over and looked at me. Nodding slowly, he said, "You need to get out of the country. And sooner would be better than later."
I sat back in my chair but didn't say anything.
"They're coming for you, doncha know. If not this month, then next. If not this year, then next. You're way ahead of the times. And, I'm tellin' you." He wagged a finger at me. "You need to get out."
Carter, who looked skeptical, asked, "Why?"
Henry laughed. "You're a couple of fancy-free queers and America don't go for that stuff, doncha know. It'd be one thing if you were artists or poets or even writers. But you're a fucking private dick, running around with firemen and cops. They don't like that kinda stuff."
"Who?" I asked. "Who doesn't like that?" I knew the answer in a vague sort of way, but I had the feeling he knew of someone or something very specific.
Grinning at me and waving his arms around, he shouted, "How the hell should I know?" He looked around the room as if someone might be listening in. "Point is that you make folks nervous about what it means to be queer. Hell, I live in the middle of nowhere and even I can tell what's going on. You're in the middle of it all."
I nodded. I thought about the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco who'd been threatening me for six months to hire the son of a local mobster. I'd tried. We'd all tried to get the kid to come on board but he was loyal to his father. The U.S. Attorney wanted us to hire him so it would cause a rift between the kid's old man and his second in command. We were getting pressure like that from all sides. The local papers didn't like us. The mayor would have been happy if we just plain left town and never came back. We only had one good contact in the police department. As I sat there thinking about it, I could feel the walls closing in.
Henry, who, once the champagne was gone, had switched to drinking from a big jug of red wine, t
ook a swig from his glass and said, "That Ginsberg, he told me you'd both been to jail already for vagrancy. He said it was some sorta cockamamie setup by the police but, still. You two, fucking each other, that's illegal. Plain and simple." He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. "You're doin' what no one else, not even Oscar Wilde, could ever get away with, doncha know. You're flying down the highway, mostly minding your own business, doing what you do, and I'm telling you there's a roadblock ahead." He ran his right hand over his face. "You gotta plane?"
I nodded.
He waved his hand at me as if there was a plane right outside in front of his house. "Get on it. Go to Paris. Wait this out. Or maybe just stay there and never come back. Who knows?" He sighed and then pointed his finger at me. "You don't have to go tomorrow, but don't wait too long. They're coming for you. Get out before it's too late."
Chapter 9
Driving north on the Roosevelt Highway
Saturday, November 12, 1955
Later that evening
The first ten minutes or so after we got in the car to head up the coast, neither of us said anything. It was chilly and I wished we could have put the top on, but Carter couldn't fit underneath it. We had the heater on full blast and were both bundled up with scarves.
Finally, Carter put his hand on my knee and said, "What do you think?"
"He scared the hell outta me."
"Me, too, son. Do you want to move?"
"No."
We drove in silence for a few more minutes.
"How about you?" I asked.
"Nope. This is our home. This is where we live."
"Yeah, but what kind of life is it if one or both of us is doing time at San Quentin or Soledad?" Those were the state prisons we'd likely be sent to if we were ever convicted of sodomy.
Carter said, "We should talk to your father."
"And your mother. And Mike."
. . .
"How would we do it?" Carter asked. We'd been on the road for about half an hour at that point. I had my freezing hands on the heater vents trying to get them to warm up.
"Kenneth and I already talked this over once. It was right after we were in jail in Marin County."
"You did?"
"Yeah. He waltzed into the office, the old one, sat down and gave me some ideas. I've already done one thing he suggested."
"You have? What was it?" He sounded annoyed and I couldn't blame him.
"I moved a lot of money to Switzerland."
"Oh." He paused. "I knew that."
"You did?"
By the light of the dashboard, I could see him glance over at me. "I saw it in the trust reports. You were moving some every month for a year or so."
"Right." I laughed. "Are we ever gonna get any good at talking about this stuff?"
"One day, son, I'm sure we will. How much was the total?"
"Just under five million."
Carter whistled. "I didn't realize we had that kinda cash."
"We didn't. I was selling things here and there. That was what Kenneth suggested."
"What did Mr. Young think about it?" He was our guy at Bank of America who managed my trust.
"He didn't say anything. I told him generally what I wanted and he did it." I remembered something. "He did mention how, if the money went out, it couldn't come back in. Something to do with double taxation. At my tax bracket, it would wipe out most of it."
"Sure."
"We could buy a house in Paris."
"Yeah. And we could do that here, without touching the money in Switzerland."
"I guess."
"How about we leave at the beginning of the year? We could just say we're going to the south of France." He patted the dashboard of the car. I guessed he was thinking about the car chase scene in To Catch A Thief that had inspired him to buy the car. "No one will think anything of it."
I nodded. The tears started trying to escape as I thought of saying goodbye to everyone and possibly not coming back.
Even though I was sure he couldn't see me, Carter put his cold hand in mine and held it until he had to downshift into a curve.
. . .
We had just driven by my father's big glass house when Carter asked, "What were the other ideas that Kenneth had?"
I had been dozing off and on for a while. I sat up and said, "To sell the property business to Robert."
"Good."
"And to sell Consolidated Security."
Carter laughed. "Did we make any money last month?"
"Nope. Not yet."
"Then who would we sell it to?"
"Mike and Greg." That was Mike's lover. He owned a small percentage of the business already. "And Marnie, of course." She was the best secretary a guy ever had. And also my stepsister as Lettie was her mother. She owned a percentage as well.
"I don't know," said Carter. "Seems like we'd be giving them a white elephant. Who owns 600 Market Street?" That was our office building.
"The property company."
"So Robert would be making a ton of money. That's where all the profit is right now, right?"
I nodded. "Yeah, I think so."
Carter sighed. "I say we keep Consolidated the way it is. And keep the planes and the yacht. Do you think it could make it to France?"
The conversation was making me feel more and more awful. I didn't want to do any of those things. I wanted to go home, stretch out in my grandfather's bed in front of a roaring fire, and make long, passionate love to my husband. I didn't want to talk about moving to France or figuring out what to sell to whom.
But, instead of saying all that, I said, "I don't think so. But we could buy one there. Besides, if we leave, Captain O'Reilly and John Murphy will have to go with us." O'Reilly was the captain of our yacht, The Flirtatious Captain. Murphy was his lover and first mate.
Part of the reason the U.S. Attorney was putting pressure on me was because he was holding a request for extradition to the U.K. over my head. It was all because we'd gone to Hong Kong earlier that year and caused a minor international incident involving Red China. The British wanted to charge O'Reilly, Murphy, and me with some sort of crime for our involvement. I'd never been told the specific crime and I'd never wanted to ask.
Carter, who seemed to be working things out in his head, said, "Your father still owns our house. We can pay him to keep the staff employed, so none of them lose their jobs. And the house on Hartford is owned by the property company. I can keep the house on Kauai and, as for the house in L.A.—"
"Stop!" I shouted, unable to take it anymore.
He slammed on the brakes and then pulled over onto the narrow shoulder by the side of the hill. "What? Is there something wrong with the car?"
"No," I said, unable to keep the tears back anymore. "This isn't a puzzle we're working on. This is our life, Carter. We're talking about walking away from everyone and everything."
He sat there for a moment, with both hands on the wheel. Finally, he put the car back into gear and pulled onto the road. "I know. And I'm sorry, Nick. I guess I'm trying to be practical so I don't lose my mind."
I sighed and said, "I know. And I know we're gonna have to work all this out. But, tonight, can we just go to that Italian restaurant we went to last year with my father and Lettie and then go back to the motel and make love? I don't want to talk about Big Sur or France or Henry Miller. I want you to tell me about Albany and high school and let me tell you about the hospital in New Guinea and the time Mike threatened to spank me for lying to him."
Carter laughed in spite of himself. "You gotta deal, Boss. I definitely wanna hear all about that last bit."
. . .
Carter, being Carter, remembered not only the restaurant's name—Giuseppe's—but its location. The place was packed when we walked in. They didn't have a bar so we waited for about fifteen minutes before being seated at a wobbly table in the back by the kitchen. That was fine by me. I always preferred to sit in the back. It was easier to get lost in Carter's eyes that way.
Once she left for the kitchen, I looked at Carter and said, "Before we talk about other things, I have to say that Henry made me feel more paranoid than I can ever remember feeling."
Carter took a sip of his Burgie and nodded. "Me, too. I'm sorry for sounding like an accountant back there."
I shook my head. "Don't be. We're gonna have to figure out what to do."
"The person we need to talk to is Lettie. She's the most level-headed person we know."
I nodded. "Good. That's settled. Now, lemme tell you about the time Mike threatened to whup my ass."
Carter grinned and leaned in. "Yeah."
I smiled in reply. "So, it was right before Christmas of 1939. Mike had been so good to me, taking me in after my father kicked me out, and basically supporting me for the first few months until I could get a job."
"You've never told me what that first job was."
"I worked in a factory South of the Slot on Howard. Hamilton's Lampshades. I put together packing cartons for fifty cents an hour. Four bucks a day."
"Did you belong to the union?"
I nodded. "The C.I.O., as a matter of fact. For a quarter a day, which wasn't that bad."
"So, what happened?"
I grinned. "I tried to give Mike a brand-new watch for Christmas."
"On four bucks a day?"
I shrugged. "Back in those days, Gump's offered a nice five-finger discount."
Carter laughed. "You stole a watch from Gump's?"
"Sure."
"How much was it worth?"
"About a hundred bucks."
Carter whistled. "Grand theft?"
I shook my head. "Petty theft. It becomes grand at two hundred."
The Rotten Rancher (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 16) Page 7
