Death in North Beach

by Ronald Tierney

  ‘To tell you something,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to do. I am frightened to do something, I’m frightened not to.’

  ‘And you think I can help you decide?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can think clearly,’ she said, finally sitting on the sofa.

  Looking at her, he wasn’t sure he could think clearly either. It had been a while since he had been with anyone. This was purely physical, but it was strong. He knew the night wouldn’t be just a bit of business about making a decision. She was seducing him with every move. The obviousness of it would have been humorous, if his mind was engaged in any kind of analytical thought. He’d find all this funny – tomorrow.

  ‘I lied about Mickey being with me the night his father was killed. I lied about that. He wasn’t with me that day or that night.’

  ‘You could have told me that over the phone.’

  ‘I want to do more than just say that.’

  ‘You are trying to decide whether to tell the police or not.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told me, Angel. This is my case and I’m obligated to do something about it. Just like the police.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So you’ve decided.’

  ‘I have more to tell you.’

  She sipped her drink, leaving him leaning forward, waiting for something perhaps more shocking than eliminating Mickey’s alibi. There was a little more to it. To ask someone to provide a false alibi was even more incriminating.

  She told Lang about her life, coming from Hong Kong as a child. Once rich, she was now reduced to getting by as best she could.

  ‘I had servants,’ she said, as she fixed him another drink. ‘Our family did, I mean – a cook, a gardener, a driver. It’s quite a comedown. Baths were drawn for me. I didn’t learn how to bathe myself until I was separated from them.’

  She had a long, sad story. It might have been true.

  ‘There’s something else you wanted to tell me,’ Lang said, after she seemed to have exhausted her autobiography.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She was being coy.

  ‘So?’ Lang asked.

  ‘But I’m not going to tell you until morning,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Finish your drink.’ She stood, slipped off her nightgown and walked toward the bedroom.

  Twenty-Two

  Carly woke enveloped in the warmth of his body, his flesh against hers. The memory was vivid and difficult to shake – not that she really wanted to. She had to, though. Nothing would come of it.

  She scooted away from him and, as she pulled on her robe, he stirred.

  ‘Morning,’ he said.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘You slept well,’ he said.

  ‘I did. Coffee?’

  ‘Please,’ he said as he tossed aside the bedclothes. His body was firm, smooth, and appeared younger than it probably was. ‘You mind if I hop in the shower?’

  ‘Please don’t hop,’ she said. ‘It will spoil everything.’

  She went to the kitchen, put the wine bottle in the recycling bin, placed the glasses in the sink and set about making coffee.

  She didn’t know what to think. Although far from being a prude about such matters, Carly had never really had what could be called casual sex. She could still count her sexual partners on the fingers of . . . both hands. She also felt, though she didn’t know why, that she was cheating. On whom?

  By the time the coffee maker gurgled it’s last gurgle and let out a telltale, steamy sigh, William Blake was in the kitchen.

  ‘So who hit you?’

  ‘You just now noticed?’

  ‘No, I just now mentioned it. The light of day turns me from romantic to pragmatist.’

  ‘Don’t know. It happened when I went to visit Wiley. Somebody clunked me pretty good.’

  ‘Would you know him if you saw him?’ He poured his own coffee.

  ‘Not sure it’s a him, but no, I wouldn’t. I didn’t see anything. But I have a question.’

  He looked at her, waiting.

  ‘Am I aiding and abetting a fugitive?’

  ‘It’s not official yet,’ William Blake said. ‘You are aiding and abetting a person of interest, so say the newspapers.’

  ‘Lang thinks you might be the murderer.’

  ‘It’s not a novel thought. But I don’t hurt people. Not intentionally. I make them feel good.’ It was obvious he was reconsidering his words. ‘I try to make them feel good. Do you feel good?’

  ‘I’m not the client. You are.’

  ‘You’re right. And I put an envelope on the bedside table for you.’

  ‘The bedside table?’

  ‘If you want you can think of it as for last night . . .’ He looked at her repressed grin. ‘It isn’t. But if it excites you . . . And, Carly, you would never be my client. You are not nearly rich enough. Last night was because I wanted to. Very much.’

  He kissed her cheek and quickly downed his coffee.

  ‘I’ll check in from time to time. I hope no one else dies.’

  ‘I . . . uh . . . agree,’ she said, not sure how to take the parting wish.

  Go away, Lang thought. The pounding and shouting bounced against his monumental headache. Sleep. He just wanted sleep. He wanted everything to go away. Maybe he could just die. That would be OK. The pain would go away, then, wouldn’t it?

  Slowly the shouts became clearer.

  ‘Come to the door, Ms Chang. Come to the door now, please.’ The ‘please’ was urgent, somehow both begging and demanding.

  There was a thud, then a crash. Footsteps on the floor, voices calling out for Ms Chang. He didn’t want to open his eyes. That would make it real. He opened in time to see distorted, out-of-focus faces looking down at him, arms coming toward him, hands grasping him, pulling him up. Then turning him around, forcing him back on the bed. His arms were pulled behind him.

  ‘Dead,’ he heard.

  What? He was dead?

  ‘Noah Lang. Jesus Christ,’ Lang heard, but couldn’t see. His face was pressed into the bedding. Where was he?

  ‘Turn him over,’ the voice said.

  Though he still could not see clearly, he could make out the face of Inspector Stern and in moments, beside that face, the face of Inspector Rose.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lang managed to say, but the headache was the worst he’d ever had and it was painful to speak, to move. To add to the punishment someone had pulled open the blinds, sending piercing shafts of light into his tormented brain.

  Rose wrapped a blanket around Lang’s nakedness.

  ‘We had a saying in the Navy, Lang,’ Stern said. He was in his usual slightly too small suit and a tie that seemed on the verge of cutting off the cop’s oxygen supply at the neck.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Lang said. He was beginning to get his bearings.

  ‘Find ’em, feel ’em, fuck ’em and forget ’em. Yours apparently added kill ’em.’

  ‘What?’ He turned. Angel was still in bed, naked and quiet. ‘What?’

  ‘She’s dead, Lang,’ Stern said. He seemed to take pleasure in delivering the news.

  There were several people in the room, a number of them in blue uniforms. Some were wearing white.

  ‘I got it,’ a uniform said, his latex-gloved hand holding what appeared to be an ice pick.

  ‘That matches the body,’ a man in glasses said.

  ‘Well, that didn’t take long,’ Stern said.

  ‘What happened?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You usually go to bed with dead women?’ Stern asked. ‘Oh, that’s right, you’ve been with dead women before.’ He referenced cases, one fifteen years earlier and one more recent, each of them involving a dead woman.

  ‘You don’t know?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I don’t remember anything. I came over last night because Angel asked me to.’

  ‘Miss Chang asked you to come over.’

  ‘Miss LeGard,’ Lang corrected.

&n
bsp; ‘Chang,’ Rose said. ‘Doesn’t matter what name she gave you.’

  ‘Why did she ask you to come over?’

  ‘She wanted to tell me something.’

  ‘Tell you something,’ Stern mimicked with disgust. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘What did she tell you?’ Rose continued in calm tones.

  ‘She told me that she lied when she alibi’d Mickey Warfield the night of his father’s death.’

  ‘She did, did she? Then you killed her.’ Stern’s face was contorted in anger.

  ‘Right. Then I crawled in beside her because I was too lazy to go home.’

  ‘She want to sleep with you?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Yeah. She also had something to tell me, but I had to wait until morning. All I remember is following her to the bedroom, maybe getting into bed. It’s vague. That’s it. Now I have the worst headache I’ve had in my life.’

  ‘How much did you have to drink?’

  ‘A glass and a half of Scotch. You have the picture?’

  ‘She slipped you a Mickey?’ Stern said, obviously finding the idea preposterous.

  ‘Mickey is right,’ Lang said. ‘I think “Mickey” is just right.’

  Rose looked at Stern. Stern shook his head, anger subsiding or turning into a general distaste for the universe.

  ‘Scene of the crime, Rose,’ Stern said. ‘We got him. Right there. Got drunk as a skunk, had a blackout, killed her.’ He laughed. ‘Poor, dumb son of a bitch. If we find your prints on the weapon, Lang, you are toast.’

  ‘Let’s get him tested,’ Rose said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Drugs and alcohol. Let’s get some facts.’

  ‘We got the facts,’ Stern said.

  ‘Now,’ Rose said. ‘I’m not blowing a case because you have a Johnson for Lang.’

  Stern stifled himself. And the process, Lang thought, looked painful.

  Lang had never seen Rose take over like that, but he was glad he did. Stern was ready to administer capital punishment on the spot and this wasn’t good cop and bad cop. Over the years Stern had developed an intense dislike for Lang. Rose didn’t care enough to have feelings one way or another. He was, though, the saner of the two.

  Lang was allowed out of handcuffs so he could dress. He looked back as they took him from the bedroom. They were putting Angel in a body bag.

  In the car, heading toward the Hall of Justice, Lang tried to remember the night before. He remembered climbing into bed with her, remembered a deep kiss, remembered his hands on her warm body, exploring. They were making love when his memory ran out.

  ‘We’ll run a few tests to see if you have something in your system that would put you out,’ Rose said.

  ‘But listen here,’ Stern said, looking back over his shoulder from the driver’s seat, ‘you could have drugged yourself.’

  ‘So, you’re saying there’s no way out here?’

  ‘I’m just saying what I’m saying,’ Stern said.

  ‘Why would I kill her?’

  ‘God knows,’ Stern said. ‘People don’t need reasons.’

  ‘Why would I set myself up? You don’t make sense.’

  ‘For a guy found in bed with a dead woman, I wouldn’t go around talking about somebody else not making sense,’ Stern said.

  ‘What else did Angel tell you?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Nothing. She was going to pull the alibi from her boyfriend Mickey. Mickey, you guys ought to know, is somehow connected to Marlene Berensen, Warfield’s mistress.’

  ‘In what way, connected?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I don’t know. But this is connected to Warfield’s death and Wiley’s.’

  ‘I know,’ Rose said.

  ‘No, you don’t fuckin’ know,’ Stern said to his partner.

  ‘Whether Lang is a slime ball or not is an open question. I got your back there,’ Rose said to Stern. ‘But he’s not going to randomly kill some woman he’s balling and if he did, why an ice pick?’

  ‘Who uses an ice pick these days? Why?’ Lang asked.

  ‘She might be cold,’ Stern said, ‘but she wasn’t frigid, was she, Lang?’

  Lang didn’t answer. But he did have a question.

  ‘Who called you?’ Lang asked.

  Neither cop responded.

  ‘C’mon, guys,’ Lang continued, ‘you didn’t just drop by to say hello. You were told where to go.’

  ‘We ask the questions,’ Stern said. ‘Don’t we, Rose?’

  ‘How far is up? Why are we here? What happens after we die?’ Rose asked.

  ‘What was a lowlife like Noah Lang doing in bed with a suspect’s girlfriend?’ Stern asked.

  ‘That’s a question,’ Rose said. ‘Takes Stern only a moment to catch on.’

  They were on their routine. Lang wouldn’t get anything. Maybe Gratelli could help.

  Lang was allowed to sit in homicide, at Rose’s desk. Stern wanted to book him. Rose wanted to let him go. A compromise was reached. They would push for the fingerprint match. If Lang’s prints were on the ice pick, it was over for the private detective, no matter what happened with the tox screen. Lang wasn’t relieved. If someone went to the trouble of killing Angel while Lang was unconscious beside her, there was little reason to believe the killer wouldn’t have wrapped Lang’s fingers around the handle. But he wasn’t in a position to negotiate.

  ‘I’m going to make a call,’ Lang said, ‘are you cool with that?’

  ‘Call to your heart’s content,’ Stern said. ‘You might try for a presidential pardon. My money says you’re gonna need it.’

  His first call went to Chastain West, the defense attorney who provided Lang with most of his work. This time, instead of West hiring Lang, it would be the reverse.

  ‘Tough times,’ Lang said.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I may be up for a murder charge. I’m here at homicide. Can you break away anytime soon?’

  ‘Yeah. Give me an hour.’

  West was one of a handful of people Lang could count on. He believed in the idea of justice and would often take cases when there was absolutely nothing in it for him but seeing that the weak or the poor weren’t trampled upon.

  Lang called Thanh and explained the situation. Thanh was surprisingly emotional and, for a moment, he seemed panicked.

  ‘Let me think,’ Thanh said. ‘We’ll do something. You tell Carly?’

  ‘Next on my list. Is she there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll catch her on the cell. We need to get a line on Mickey Warfield. Every move he makes. You might pick up the trail at Marlene Berensen. She lives in the Marina. He uses her car sometimes and who knows what else?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘We need to go deeper on Mickey’s life. We don’t know what he does for a living. We don’t even know where he lives, unless he lives with Marlene. If that’s the case then that’s very, very interesting. Can you find out?’

  ‘I’m on it. Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah. If you have the time. Find out about gang activity in Chinatown in the last few years. Has there been any? Who was involved? Find out if Ralph Chiu has any suspicious associations. Keep Carly in the loop.’

  Carly Paladino was still adjusting to being her own boss. After years of regular office hours at Vogel Security, nine to six or seven, weekends off, she found it odd that work could be done when it needed to be done. That working until midnight some nights meant that she might hang out at home until noon. Saturdays and Sundays were whatever she wanted them to be.

  She spent this Friday morning at the Ferry Building, wandering through the farmer’s markets. Because it was late September, she was aware the amount and variety of fresh produce would soon be in decline. But there were fall vegetables and fruits. Her head felt normal and she reluctantly admitted that while last night caused her to engage in a little critical self-reflection, she felt good. Relaxed. Renewed. She also felt somewhat relieved that this was not an affair. Not an affair, she repeated in her mind
as she looked at what might be the last of the really good local tomatoes.

  Her cell had beeped several times. Finally, she worried that it was truly urgent.

  ‘Lang here,’ the voice said.

  ‘Hi, Noah.’

  ‘I’m in a bit of trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Murder trouble. I’m being arrested for the murder of Angel LeGard aka Chang.’

  ‘What?’ Carly heard him. She just needed a moment to process it.

  ‘My fingerprints were found on the handle of the weapon that killed her.’

  ‘I don’t understand. This Angel Chang . . .’

  ‘Mickey Warfield’s girlfriend.’

  ‘How did they connect her death to you?’

  Lang cleared his throat. ‘I’ve only got a minute. They just told me about the prints. As they say in the movies, “I wuz framed.”’

  ‘Noah, tell me how they came to you.’

  ‘When I woke up she was beside me. Dead. The police were coming through the front door.’

  ‘Someone dumped her at your place? It doesn’t sound . . .’

  ‘No, I was at her place. Things . . . developed,’ Lang said. ‘I think that in the process, she put something in my Scotch.’

  ‘Noah . . .’

  ‘I gotta go. Not my idea . . .’

  Click.

  Carly didn’t know what to think. She wasn’t even sure what she felt. There was anger. Was it because Lang had acted unprofessionally? Or was it that she didn’t like the idea that Lang was sleeping around?

  ‘Well, you’re a prize hypocrite,’ Carly said out loud and to herself. Life should be clearer, she thought.

  Twenty-Three

  And there it was. After all these years, after all these close calls, Lang found himself in jail. He was surprised that he had not been before. And, for an experience that was now only an hour old, he was also surprised at how frightening it was. He wasn’t fearful of his life or limb. He wasn’t fearful of inmates or guards. He was fearful of the confinement, the sense that he was no longer in control of anything. It was a mix of claustrophobia, which he knew he had, and the strange reality that he could be lost in time and space. After only an hour.

  ‘Big baby,’ he said to himself.

  He was relieved to see Chastain West. The man was dressed as usual in low-key style – browns today of various textures, perfectly, self-consciously chosen, as were his movements and words. He was a handsome black man, a little silver around the temples suggesting that even his wisdom was cool.