I didn’t reply, simply waited—eying him steadily. Neither of us had time to squander on his grief.
Finally, shakily, he said, “She always went to private schools—Burke’s, here in the city, then Miss Sherwood’s, in Vermont. She always got good grades. Always, even when she was a little girl. Her brother, Bruce, never—” He stopped, glancing at me quickly, almost furtively. Then: “Karen always did well in school. In Radcliffe she was in the top five percent of her class. She’s—brilliant.” His eyes far away, he blinked again, swallowing hard.
“What did she do after college?” I prodded.
“That—that’s when it all happened. After college. She graduated when she was only twenty. Then she went to New York. It was her—first taste of freedom, I suppose. She worked for one of those avant-garde literary magazines for a while; I don’t even remember its name. All I remember is the salary they paid her—three hundred seventy-five a month. Her rent, if I remember, was two hundred eighty.” Recalling, there was a note of bitterness in his voice.
“How’d she make the rent?”
“On her twenty-first birthday Karen inherited a trust fund,” he said, almost reluctantly, “from her grandfather—my wife’s father.”
“What was the value of that fund, Mr. Manley?”
“Just under four hundred thousand dollars.”
Calculating, I said, “So she had more than twenty thousand dollars a year in private income.”
“That’s correct, Lieutenant. And that’s where it all—started. With that money.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that she started to come apart. Her values, her basic morality, her good common sense—it all just seemed to—” He paused, as though baffled. “It all seemed to disintegrate, virtually from the moment she got that inheritance. Overnight, almost.”
“How do you account for the change, Mr. Manley?”
“I can’t account for it, Lieutenant. Unless it’s drugs. They say that LSD and STP can produce personality changes.”
“Was your daughter heavily involved with drugs, Mr. Manley?”
“I—I’m not really sure. I mean, I know she—experimented. I got that much from Bruce, my son. But hell, the majority of kids experiment. They all smoke pot. And a lot of them, I understand, try LSD and STP once or twice. And if they’re careful—if they quit after the first time or two—they seem to come out of it. So—” He broke off, shaking his head helplessly.
“We come back to the money, then—her inheritance.”
For a long moment he didn’t reply, but simply stared down at the rosewood desk. His hands, as before, were braced wide apart, as if he were afraid of toppling forward. Then, speaking in a low voice, he said, “We live in a society that worships money. Yet, so help me God, I’ve seen more people made miserable by money than I’ve seen made happy. My whole family, from my grandparents right down to my children—they’ve all had money. And they’ve all been unhappy.”
“Why is that, Mr. Manley?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant. Unless it’s the—the magnification factor of money. Everything is more intense. Starker. Everything moves faster. It’s like driving a fast car, you can’t make any mistakes. It—it’s hard to explain. I—I don’t know what I’m really saying, even, except that it’s all a fraud—a vicious, dishonest farce concocted by overpaid copywriters who really want to be penniless poets. So—” Again he shook his head, then turned his hands palms up on the desk in a small gesture of both supplication and defeat. “So you end up with everything and nothing. Just like everyone else. It’s the American way.”
“You’re right,” I answered softly, caught up in his mood. “I was defrauded myself, I’m afraid. A long time ago.”
When he looked up to meet my gaze, I saw that his eyes were brimming.
“I’ve got to go, Lieutenant.” He rose. “Will Karen be—” He paused, cleared his throat, then said, “Will she be taken to the morgue?”
“Yessir.” I rose with him. “I’ll have one of my men meet you at your home. He’ll be waiting outside for you. He’ll help you—stay with you, as long as you need him.”
“Thank you. Are you going to interview the—the members of my family?”
“Yes. I’ll give it an hour, though—until you’ve had a chance to talk with them. Is there just your wife and son?”
He took a handkerchief from his pocket. Looking down at the neatly folded square of gleaming white linen, he said indistinctly, “There is now, Lieutenant. Just my wife and son.”
7
THE PATROLMAN STANDING “REPORTER guard” at the Manleys’ front door didn’t recognize me. Coldly watching my approach, he was casually smoking a cigarette. When I identified myself, he clumsily shifted the cigarette from his right hand to his left, hastily half-saluting.
A trim, quick-eyed Negro maid led me to a small sitting room in the back of the house. The door was open. A small, stylish woman sat alone in a chintz-covered wing chair. She was dressed in a simple white blouse and gray flannel skirt, the carefully cur, understated morning uniform of the fashionable Pacific Heights matron. She was half-turned away from me, looking out at a magnificent view of the Golden Gate. Her hands were clasped in her lap. Between two gracefully crooked fingers she held a smoldering cigarette. Her neatly coiffured head was held painfully erect. The whole high-style tableau—the woman, the room, the view—all seemed carefully composed, ready for a Town and Country photographer.
I introduced myself, hesitated a moment, then sat to face her, uninvited. “I won’t take much of your time, Mrs. Manley. I’m sorry I have to be here at all. But I don’t have any choice.”
Her posture didn’t change; her dark, inscrutable eyes didn’t shift. Her face was rigid, unrevealing—muscles tautly drawn, pale lips compressed, chin uptilted. Studying her covertly, I found myself irrelevantly wondering whether the Elizabeth Arden perfection of her make-up might be all that kept her face from dissolving into crumpled, ugly, middle-aged grief. Then, more to the point, I wondered whether she’d wept, hearing of her daughter’s murder. If she’d been crying, she’d completely repaired the cosmetic damage during the half-hour since Mr. Manley must have left for the morgue.
“What I need from you, Mrs. Manley,” I said, “is some idea of who you think might have wanted to kill your daughter. Did she have any enemies, that you know of?”
For a long moment, sitting perfectly motionless, fixedly staring at the view, she didn’t stir. Then she lowered her eyes to the cigarette she still held. Finally, with slow, wooden precision, she ground it out in an overflowing crystal ashtray.
Turning only her head, hands gripping the arms of the wing chair, she twisted to face me fully. Her expression was aloof; her features were taut, tightly drawn—thoroughbred lean. Something behind her eyes was dead.
“I didn’t know anything about my daughter’s life, Lieutenant. Nothing at all. I didn’t even know her friends, much less her enemies.”
“She was the beneficiary of a sizable trust fund, I understand.”
She nodded.
“Can you tell me,” I said slowly, “the disposition of that money, now—” I let it go unfinished.
She sighed once, very deeply. “I’m not really sure, Lieutenant. I’d have to consult our lawyer. But the fund was for the children—specifically for the children. Bruce and Karen.”
“Does your son have a similar inheritance?”
“Yes, he does. But it’s smaller than Karen’s, because of his age.”
“How much smaller, would you say?”
She frowned, puzzled. Then she began shaking her head. Her gaze was vague, unfocused. I was losing her.
“Can you tell me anything else that might help me, Mrs. Manley?” I pressed. “Can you guess why she might’ve been killed?”
For a long, lingering moment her dark, dead eyes studied me. Yet I realized that my question hadn’t registered. She was lost—wandering aimlessly somewhere deep inside herself.
Very
slowly, very deliberately—still tightly gripping the chair—she turned back to the Golden Gate.
“I’m fifty-two years old,” she said in a dull, disembodied monotone, “and I’ve been sitting in this chair—in this same position—for more than an hour.” She paused, again sighing deeply—obviously in shock. Then, in the same trancelike voice: “I don’t think I can ever remember sitting in a chair for an hour. Not since I was a little girl, anyhow. Not since I used to read books, during one whole summer—the summer I got orthodontic braces and hated to go outside.”
I didn’t answer—didn’t want to disturb her.
“Just before you came,” she was saying, “sitting here, I suddenly realized that I was thinking back over my life—actually reliving the past, the way you’re supposed to relive your life when you’re dying. It was a—a shock. Introspection isn’t my bag, as”—she gulped spasmodically—“as the children say.”
“Is your other child here, Mrs. Manley? Now?”
A wry, ironic bitterness worked at her mouth. “Yes,” she answered, “Bruce is here. He arrived about a half-hour ago. To”—she smiled faintly—“to comfort me, I imagine. However, I’m sure he’ll be leaving soon. If he hasn’t left already.”
I rose. “I’ll see if I can find him. I—I’m very sorry for your loss. If there’s anything we can do to help, call me. I’ll leave my card with your maid.”
She nodded silently. Still with her chin high, she was looking out again at her expensive view, alone.
I found Bruce Manley in the kitchen. He was sitting at a small breakfast table, holding an empty coffee cup. He was a “3-A subject”—average height, average build, average features. His lank sandy hair was worn hippie-length. His complexion was sallow; his drab brown eyes moved indecisively. His mouth was too small, his nose too thin, his chin too weak. His head was set at an odd, forward angle on his scrawny neck. He was dressed in a torn, dirty red and black hunting shirt, faded blue Levi’s and black engineer’s boots. Walking the street, his scruffy appearance and slack, sloppy posture would catch the attention of any officer searching for suspects. In the Manley kitchen, against a lavish background of formica, stainless steel and polished wood, he was wildly out of place.
Standing before him, looking him over, I first confirmed his identity, then introduced myself. Watching his sluggish response, I wondered whether Bruce Manley was “softened up”—permanently spaced out: a lost, lonely casualty of the drug culture.
I sat across the table, still looking him over, silently. Quickly he began to fidget, his glance flickering from the coffee cup to my face, then fleetingly around the kitchen, finally returning to the empty cup, which he held as if he were trying to warm both hands. He was swallowing repeatedly—noisily bobbing his prominent Adam’s apple.
“You’re younger than your sister,” I began, pitching my voice to a casual conversational level.
For the first time he looked at me, then nodded jerkily.
“How old are you?” I pressed.
“I’m”—he licked his lips—“I’m twenty-three.”
“Your sister was twenty-six.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see much of your sister?”
“Once in a while,” he mumbled, his eyes averted again.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I”—he swallowed—“I saw her last night.”
With great effort I kept my eyes steady, my voice level and noncommittal as I said, “What time did you see her last night?” My breathing, I realized, was suddenly uneven.
“About eleven o’clock, I guess. I—”
The kitchen door opened. A heavy-set woman in a cook’s uniform came into the kitchen. Seeing us, she stopped short, startled, hand on her bulging bosom. Then, turning to the boy, she said heavily, “Hello, Bruce.”
His face was expressionless as he looked up at her. “Hello, Florence.”
Her eyes were red; she’d been crying, and was ready to begin crying again, soap-opera style. As I drew a long, impatient breath, she turned to me apologetically. “I was just going to—to start something for lunch. It—it’s almost noon, and—” Her voice trailed off as she flapped her hands helplessly, looking at Bruce Manley with dampish, chin-quivering sympathy.
I asked her to come back in ten minutes. Then, realizing that I must get Bruce Manley alone, I asked him where he lived. He gave me an address in Buena Vista Heights.
“Do you have a car?” I asked.
“No. My roommate has it. I took a cab.”
“I’ll drive you home, then.” I rose to my feet, standing before him as he obediently rose, stoop-shouldered, listless-seeming.
8
“THERE IT IS.” HE pointed to a vintage shingled house set back from the street. The house, like the neighborhood, had once been comfortably upper-middle-class. But five years ago the Haight-Ashbury had materialized, just down the hill.
We’d hardly spoken during the short drive from Pacific Heights to Buena Vista Heights. Once or twice I’d caught him glancing at me sideways, but I couldn’t fathom his expression, or his mood. When I’d expressed sympathy for the loss of his sister, he’d hardly responded, except to sigh petulantly, as if the subject was more exasperating than tragic. Plainly, Bruce Manley was withdrawn and unhappy. But his unhappiness went much deeper than the death of his sister.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said shortly, reaching jerkily for the door handle.
“Do you mind if I come in with you? I’d like to ask you about last night, if you’ve got a few minutes.”
He removed his hand from the handle and twisted to face me. His muddy, unhappy brown eyes were unblinking. “What about last night?” His voice was level; his gaze was flat. Suddenly he seemed in full possession of himself.
Strangely, I felt on the defensive. “I’d like you to tell me everything about last night that relates to your sister—when you saw her, where, for how long. Everything.”
He blinked with mild vexation, and then began a bored-sounding recital: “I got to her apartment about eleven, as I said. I was with Billy—Billy Mitchell, my roommate. We stayed for about an hour. Maybe an hour and a half.”
“So you left not later than twelve-thirty.”
“Yes.”
“Did you come directly home?”
He nodded, and again seemed totally indifferent—inert, listless. Had I been wrong about the effect of his sister’s death? Was he actually in delayed shock?
I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t get to him—couldn’t find the handle. I couldn’t decide whether he was intelligent or dull—on drugs or off drugs—possibly guilty or apparently innocent. His mannerisms and his speech were contradictory. One moment he seemed self-assured; the next moment, vulnerable, indecisive, withdrawn.
“Why’d you visit your sister last night?” I asked. “Any special reason?”
“I went to pick up some grass, Lieutenant.” He said it with a kind of wry, resigned defiance.
I wondered whether I’d finally found the handle: a basic indifference to whatever trouble he might cause himself. He was a bleeder, licking greedily at his self-inflicted wounds. In admitting to possession, he was obliquely challenging me to take action against him.
I nodded to the brown-shingled house. “Do you own, or rent?”
“Rent.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About a year.”
“What was your previous residence?”
He half-snorted, humorlessly. “A succession of colleges. Europe for six months. Greenwich Village for a year, and Santa Fe for a while.”
“That’s quite an odyssey.”
“You say that like a man who might’ve been on an odyssey or two himself, Lieutenant.” His voice was touched with lazy irony; his eyes slanted toward me with an almost insolent appraisal. The glance could easily have passed from one bar stool to another—in a gay bar.
“Almost everyone goes on an odyssey or two,” I answered. “It’s jus
t that the routes vary with the bankroll.”
“You turn a neat phrase, Lieutenant. I always thought policemen were basically inarticulate. Cruel, right-wing, Irish and inarticulate.”
“That description might cover half the cops I know. But that still leaves half.”
“Touché.”
I allowed a moment to pass, slowing the conversation’s pace. The interrogation had slipped into a bantering, abrasive pattern, perfect for my purpose. I didn’t want to break his mood.
“I understand,” I said, “that both you and your sister have—had—trust funds.”
His only response was a watchful nod.
“Hers was about four hundred thousand dollars.”
“Yes.” His voice was very low.
“Yours is somewhat smaller, I understand.”
Sighing with broadly affected boredom, he said, “That’s correct. Three hundred thousand smaller, to be exact.”
“Yours is a hundred thousand dollars, then.”
“Yes.”
A hundred thousand at, say, six percent came to six thousand a year. Not much, for someone who liked to travel. I decided to defer the too-obvious question of who would inherit Karen’s estate. I had him talking. I wanted to keep him talking.
“I’d like to get back to last night, Bruce. Were both your sister and Mr. Valenti at home?”
“Yes. They were almost always home. They spent most of their time in bed, getting stoned and watching color TV and making love. Except, of course, for the time Valenti spent doing his isometrics, to keep his tummy trim.”
“Were they in bed last night?”
“Valenti was. Karen got into something comfortable and came to the door. Then we all went back to the bedroom.”
“Was the front door locked when you arrived?”
“I guess so. I didn’t try it.”
“Did they usually keep their doors locked?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Was Valenti nude when you and your roommate entered the bedroom?”
“As much as I could see of him. He didn’t treat us to a view of his genitals.”
Dead Aim (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 5
