“Why not delegate him to paperwork, for Christ’s sake?”
“Nope. Too deliberate a slam, and the Irish community’s still got a lot of say on the force.” She smiled. “Have some coffee.”
Luke sighed with defeat and accepted the coffee, leaning back in his chair. Maybe Doan was right, he thought. Maybe it was a malevolent universe after all.
Sergeant Flaharity wondered what Connors was up to, staring down at the floor like that, and came over to offer his help. “What do we have here?” he asked, stepping on a piece of paper with a painted footprint that didn’t match the dead man’s shoes, obliterating it instantly. Connors groaned, put his hands over his face, and left before he struck a fellow policeman.
“Sergeant, over here.”
Flaharity began to amble toward the man from the lab, who paled. “Sergeant Connors, hurry!” he said in a panic, fearing that Flaharity would somehow manage to destroy this piece of potential evidence as well.
Connors was no younger than Flaharity, but it wasn’t hard to be in better shape, and he handily beat him to the other side of the studio. “Yeah, what’ve you got?” The lab man handed him a piece of paper in a plastic bag.
Connors examined the prints lifted from the pipe, and then the paper. When he was done, he said, “I think you’d better call Detective Faraglione. Now.”
“And then what?” Doan demanded of Binky over the phone, ignoring any potential customers in the record store where he held yet another part-time position.
“Wait a minute.” He turned to his coworker, a fortyish man with granny glasses and a death-defyingly huge head of curly hair. “Could you turn that down a little, please?”
“Heeeeyyyy, maaaannnn! Whutttsss thuuuhh haaassssle?”
Doan gritted his teeth, smiled, and turned the Dylan record back down to an indiscernible level.
“What’s that noise?” Binky asked. “Sounds like someone gave a record contract to a singing rat.”
“It’s a Bob Dylan album.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Now, what did you two do for three days? Tell!”
“I can’t.”
“What?! What do you mean you can’t tell? Why not? What other reason is there for going to bed with someone other than to tell? Well, in his case I can see a good reason, but still! We tell each other everything. Why do you want to stop now, in my hour of greatest need?”
“Because...I don’t know. It just feels like something private.”
“Oh, my,” Doan said, watching the old hippie disappear into the back room for a joint. “Is this love?” He turned the volume back up after putting on the Liquid Sky soundtrack.
“Maybe. No, it can’t be. I don’t know!” she finished with a forlorn wail.
Doan sighed. “I know, believe me, I know.”
Binky’s voice immediately lost its despairing tone.
“What?”
“I think I’m in love, too.”
“Oh, come on. Stan? Already?”
“Binky, he’s just wonderful. He’s a great artist, he’s so much fun to be with, and that’s even when we’re out of bed, and in bed...well, let me tell you.”
“Yeah, yeah, tell me!”
“Can’t. It’s love.”
“Bitch!” she accused.
Doan looked down from his perch at the register at the young lady before him. “No, no, no! A thousand times no!” He snatched the record from her hand. “How many times do I have to say it? I won’t sell children Whitney Houston albums! They’ll rot your brain. When you’re twenty-one and responsible for your own destruction, I’ll let you have it. Do your parents know you’re getting this shit? And no Michael Bolton, either!” he called after the rapidly retreating innocent.
“Are you having a hard time of it?” Binky asked him.
He shrieked. “You were right, I should have kept some more of that money. All they’ll let me wear is a simple print shift, and I have to wear a name tag! ‘Hello, my name is ... DOAN!’ Get me out of here!” he demanded unreasonably.
He heard a click-click. “Hold on,” Binky said.
“Oh, no. I hate that call waiting thing. PG&E is lucky that I let them put me on hold. You call me back.”
Doan put the phone back in its cradle and removed the Liquid Sky soundtrack from the turntable. The music was ideal for aggravating hippies, but after a while it even aggravated Doan. Seeing three heavy metal heads enter the store, he replaced it with a thumping disco Pet Shop Boys mix. He soon had the whole store to himself, so he settled back into his chair to read a book. No sooner had he opened it than the phone rang. “Strawberry Electric Pop-Tart Aquarius Acid Trip Records,” he answered.
“Is that really what that place is called?” Binky asked distantly.
“Yes indeed, God help us all,” Doan answered, wondering what was so suddenly wrong.
“Oh. Um ... I have some bad news for you.”
“Bad news? Let me guess: You’ve talked to the owner of this dump, and he’s not going to fire me so I can collect unemployment.”
“It’s Stan.”
Doan was instantly alert. “What?”
“He’s been arrested.”
“For what?”
“Murder.”
Doan met Binky and KC at the Hall of Justice. They were engaged in a serious conversation with Luke.
“Where is he?” Doan demanded. “Let him out now!” While Doan’s loving frenzy might seem unreasonable to most of us who recall our first few days of knowing someone, let it be recalled that Stan possessed the four qualities that Doan had long ago settled upon as necessary should he ever take a husband: good looks, great sex, dry sense of humor and, while he didn’t own a palatial home, Stan’s large, airy loft was reasonably fabulous. Besides, gay time is different than straight time - a second date is considered a serious relationship.
Luke took Doan in hand and led him over to the corner where the three of them had been talking.
“Your friend’s been arrested for murder. There’s some evidence that he’s the SoMa Killer.”
Doan promptly sat down on the floor. “That…is impossible.”
Luke showed him a copy of the most damaging piece of evidence, the note found in the last victim’s studio.
Dear Thief:
Everything you’ve done you’ve stolen from someone else. You try and sell that painting and I’ll come wrap one of your I beams around your head.
Your victim.
“That’s no proof!” Doan shouted.
“I’m afraid that’s Stan’s handwriting. And Stan’s prints are on the murder weapon.”
“He picked up an I beam and bashed someone’s head in with it?”
“No. It was a pipe. Same general effect, though.”
Doan got up, a determined look on his face. He turned to Luke. “How much to bail him out?”
“Well, let’s see. He’s got no record, but he is a suspected serial killer. Chances are that bail will be denied.”
“I want to see him.” And he began marching toward the visitors’ entrance.
“There’s no arguing with him at times like these,” Binky told Luke.
Luke sighed. “What the hell. Stan’s got no relations. I’ll put Doan down as his brother, that’ll get him in.”
Binky hugged Luke. “You’re an angel.”
“Tell me more.”
“Darling!” Doan yelled as he ran toward Stan, but he lost a little of his enthusiasm when he bumped his nose into the glass divider between Stan and himself.
Stan pointed to the phone in Doan’s visitor’s cubicle. “You sure know a lot about how things work around here.” Doan said into the phone. “Come here often?”
“Sure,” Stan said bitterly. “I’m always out murdering someone.”
“Now, now. You can’t lose heart. Can I bring you anything?”
“Yeah, a cake with a shotgun in it for me to use on whoever set me up.”
“Hmm. I’d have to make a sheet cake to hide a
shotgun, and those are so trying. Would you settle for a good lawyer?”
“I’d settle for a good reason why I’m here.”
“The note, dear.”
“What note?”
“The note they found in the studio. From you, telling him that if he sold some painting, you’d kill him. What painting?”
“Oh, crap.” Stan leaned back and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. “That. I did this gag sketch, I did it as a joke. I just put every bad artist’s device I could think of into it, and I showed it to some dealer at a party who I thought might get a laugh out of it and he...” He laughed and shook his head. “He took it seriously. He wanted me to paint it, so he could buy it. Well, he wasn’t happy when I told him it was a joke. Anyway, Arbuthnott ...”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Arbuthnott. My supposed victim’s name. He was there, and he obviously overheard me, because the next thing I know, I’m in a gallery looking at this painting, it’s from my sketch, and it’s got Arbuthnott’s signature and a ten thousand dollar price tag on it...and it’s marked sold.”
“So you sent the little creature the note.”
“Right. That’s it.”
“Then why, love, are your fingerprints all over his studio?”
Stan flushed. “I didn’t exactly send it. I kind of...hand delivered it. Having gotten in through a locked window.”
“With a brightly painted pipe.”
“Yeah, how’d you...oh, shit. I left it there.”
“Well. That might explain why the police think you’re guilty, all right,” Doan said defeatedly.
“Christ, Doan, I appreciate your coming here, really.” He smiled his melting smile. “But there’s not a whole hell of a lot you can do for me. I mean...you’re not what anyone would consider a political powerhouse.”
Doan looked at him, smiled, then began to laugh. “Oh, if only you knew. If only you knew.” He got up. “I promise you, darling, you’ll be free in no time.”
Doan came out of the jail and dashed past the three of them. “We’re going to get Stan off the hook.”
“How?” Binky asked.
“Meet me tonight. At Le Club.”
Le Club, in spite of its having the most unimaginative name in a city full of imaginatively named nightclubs, was the hottest club in the city; at least, it was when you started reading this paragraph. It was one of the first gay clubs with the foresight to go from disco to new wave, and was again the first to go from there to house. The only way to stay ahead of radio and MTV and the other clubs was to have the best dance music first. And only someone with enough time on his hands to read all the domestic and foreign music magazines and listen to anything that looked interesting - all purchased with Le Club’s money - could keep up with the ever-changing music scene and placate the ever-finicky crowds. So Doan McCandler had a job, a real job, mind you, from midnight to 6 A.M. Friday and Saturday nights, a job that suited his personality as he could go to it when and if he felt like it. One weekend he’d gone off to the Russian River with a new gentleman friend, and revenues had been off 50 percent from previous Friday nights, as the regulars heard a top forty song on the speakers, concluded from this that Doan wasn’t in the booth, and left. The fact was that Le Club’s livelihood depended on its Friday and Saturday night take, and that take depended on Doan McCandler’s talent for spying out the newest rage to be - thus the sole reason he had retained this job for six months, the longest he’d ever held one job.
Binky knew Doan was in full form when she saw him standing under the marquee at Le Club. It was already dark when she and KC arrived, and the shadows on the street lent an extra air to the six foot
two man in an Indiana Jones hat, sunglasses, and a trench coat over his prom dress.
“What’s with the secret agent outfit?” KC asked.
“We are marked women. You never know what assassins the Grand Order of the Knights of Cubism have sent after us. Quick, inside!”
They went upstairs to the D] booth. Doan shrugged out of his trench coat, waved to the cheering crowd as the departing D] announced him, cued up KLF’s “Last Train to Transcentral,” and fell into his chair, his headphones accessorized insouciantly around his neck.
“Right-0!” he said, and extracted a piece of paper from his bosom. “I’ve been working on a few ideas. What do we know so far?” He readied the latest Orb remix on the second turntable. “First of all, that Stan is innocent. We all believe that, yes?” They agreed.
“Second, the police have arrested Stan on the flimsiest of evidence.” He looked at them, and neither of them dared to say that a threatening note and fingerprints at the scene of the crime were rather incriminating. “Third, what’s the best reason for killing an artist? Besides for being awful. Because the works of dead artists are worth more than the works of living artists, right?”
“Luke’s looking into that,” Binky said defensively. She knew Stan was innocent, even though she’d just met him. After all, he was a friend of KC’s, and he and Doan had fallen in love at first sight. What better character references could Stan have in her eyes? All the same, the suggestion that Luke wasn’t doing his job irked her. “You know, he didn’t want to arrest Stan.”
“No,” Doan agreed. “But after I cooled down, I called Luke and we had a little chat, and I agreed jail was the best place for Stan.”
“What?” “Huh?” Binky and KC asked disbelievingly.
“Well, it’s true. Luke has a suspect under arrest, which gets his superiors off his back, so he can do his job. The real killer thinks he’s gotten away with murder, so he’ll be less careful. And this way, if there’s another murder, they’ll know Stan’s innocent, because he’s got the perfect alibi. And that frees us up to use all assets at our disposal.”
“All right, Doan,” KC said impatiently. “What assets do we have?”
“Our wits. I shall no longer be Cornelia Guest, goodtime debutante. I shall now become...Nancy Drew!”
“Shit,” KC said irritably. “Come off it. Look, one of my best friends is in jail, and you want to play games.”
Doan smiled ever so slightly, and Binky, knowing the warning signs, sat down out of the way. “He’s become a little more than a friend to me.”
KC snorted derisively. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Look, he doesn’t have any money, he doesn’t even have any charge cards, so you might as well start looking in other directions for your new source of support.”
“KC!” Binky whispered, horrified.
Doan was still smiling. “It’s all right. Really. I’ll just call my friend Martin Hart and tell him I won’t be needing his services after all. And then ...”
“Wait a minute,” KC said. “Martin Hart?” He refused to believe that Doan could know one of the city’s most prominent trial lawyers.
“Yes. He’s Stan’s new lawyer. Martin owes me a few favors. So I’ll call him and cancel that arrangement, and then cancel my appointment with a certain someone for whom I provide, shall we say, a goodly amount of grist for his mill?”
Only in San Francisco would that remark be understood, but in the city, everyone understood. Art Mill’s daily column, “Grist for the Mill,” had been running for some thirty years, thriving on Mill’s ability to discover firsthand, or from a reliable source, exactly what everyone in the city was doing. And he reported every behind - the-scenes going-on of every famous name without ever using the name, merely dropping a hint that would in any other city be too broad, such as “big-time developer,” “culture vulture numero uno,” “local movie trillionaire.” But the readers of the paper knew them all instantly. Visiting out-of-towners were completely baffled by all such references, but that was due to San Francisco’s unique character; it was, really, the nation’s biggest small town, where some were tolerant and others were bigots, but they were all nosy Parkers, all members of the world’s largest and yet most exclusive club. And Art Mill played no small part in spreading the glue that held the city together. Men who got instant
admission into the offices of kings and presidents were kept waiting for Art Mill unless they’d arrived with a juicy tidbit for the column. There was, however, a small list of mostly unknown names, the names of those who were always welcome, and Doan McCandler was on it.
Binky and KC exchanged disbelieving glances.
“Surely you don’t doubt?” Doan asked. “But you’ve seen my code name in the column hundreds of times: ‘The man who sleeps with those who know’?”
“You?” KC accused.
“Oui. Moi. Will one of you go to the bar and get me a pitcher of tonic and ice? just tell Larry it’s for me.” Binky, after an examination of the dance floor below, decided KC was most likely to make it through the ecstatic dancers and back without succumbing to the waves of love.
“The man who sleeps with those who know,” Binky said accusingly after KC was dispatched. “And all this time, I thought you spent your nights at home yelling at the TV.”
“Oh, honey, I don’t sleep with all those men. But closet cases tell me the stories of their lives in the hope that I’ll give them a tumble, which I don’t, and alcoholic matrons take me to lunch and rat on their husbands. And Eleanor hears all sorts of dirt, people are so free with their tongues around her because so many of them think she’s still crazy. Free drinks, free food, and Art pays me to boot.”
“I don’t understand. Le Club pays you. Art Mill pays you. The record store pays you. Eleanor Ambermere pays you. Even I pay you. But it always seems like you’re broke and never doing anything.”
He indicated what he was wearing. “Do you know you can’t buy a black prom dress? You have to have it made to order. And it cost a bundle. And I couldn’t be caught out in less than the best. Hand me that Cure record, would you? The orange one.”
Death Wore a Smart Little Outfit Page 7
