Windward Passage

by Jim Nisbet

  San Francisco was having some of that cool weather people who live in the Avenues know more about than anybody else in the city. She sat in the Adirondack chair wrapped in a blanket and thought about things. Things like, is this nice tan I got in the Caribbean going to last long enough to impress Faulkner? Then she remembered that Faulkner would be long gone to his boat in the San Blas Islands or Zihuatanejo or some place, and he’d stay there until late next spring. Not only that, but with Charley dead and no more letters to pick up, she had two less reasons to be seeing Faulkner at all. Quentin dead, meaning nobody to drink with, made four. And then, if she quit drinking entirely, she had five excellent reasons never to darken the door of that bar again.

  She could get her political fix from newspapers. Or radio. Or even the internet.

  It was as if someone had thrown a switch on the rails in front of her.

  She fingered the antique locket at the small of her throat.

  All aboard for the bifurcation.

  First things first, she paid a visit to the coroner’s office on 4th Street. Sure enough, the morgue was sitting on an unclaimed head.

  “I need to see it,” she told them. The receptionist, who was a deputy sheriff, asked her to wait. After no more than five minutes Jimmy Nix himself appeared. He stripped off a pair of latex gloves, dropped them in a trash can, introduced himself, accepted a folder offered by his receptionist, and ushered his visitor into an elevator that took them three stories down to the deep freeze.

  Jimmy Nix donned a fresh pair of latex gloves, retrieved a clear plastic bag from a refrigerated drawer, set it on a stainless steel table, unzipped it, unsheathed the head, and turned it so she could see what was left of the face. Lips, earlobes, and eyes were gone. Some of the nose remained, and that was helpful. A ragged gray tonsure. The pallor was not unlike a color often referred to as IBM gray.

  “Was there an earring?” Tipsy asked.

  Nix consulted his folder. “We found a circular hoop of gold wire, three-eighths inch in diameter, in the left auditory canal. If you like I can—”

  “That’s him,” Tipsy said with a remarkably firm voice. And she placed her hands on the decrepit tonsure, then picked up the head and embraced it.

  “Ahm.” The coroner touched a gloved hand to her shoulder. “That’s not policy.”

  Though cold to the touch, it was like holding a skull-sized volume of coral, hollowed by sea creatures. “Give me a minute, can’t you?” Tipsy said. “This is my brother.”

  Jimmy Nix had witnessed many such scenes. He turned aside, ostensibly to set down his papers, but really to give the poor woman a moment before he gently prevailed upon her to relinquish the severed head.

  “Okay. Thank you.” Tipsy brushed a sleeve while she silently counted to three. Then she asked the coroner if she might borrow a pair of scissors.

  Jimmy Nix raised an eyebrow. “May I ask why?”

  “I’d like to have a lock of my brother’s hair,” Tipsy replied in a most reasonable tone,

  Jimmy Nix blinked.

  “As a keepsake,” she added.

  Jimmy Nix had a certain reputation, around the department, for being difficult to faze. Now he felt as if his composure were but a little board shack built on quicksand.

  “You do believe he’s my brother?”

  The coroner nodded.

  “It’s true we weren’t all that close. We hadn’t seen each other in fifteen or sixteen years.” Tipsy opened her hands towards the head on the table. “But he was all the family I had.”

  Jimmy Nix opened a narrow drawer in a roll-around cabinet and selected a sharp-pointed pair of stainless steel suture scissors.

  Tipsy snipped a two-inch lock from just aft of Charley’s left auditory canal, and she made sure a few strands came away with their follicles, too. “Thank you very much.” She handed the scissors back to Jimmy Nix, finger loops first. “Could I trouble you for an envelope, or maybe a zip-lock bag?”

  After he had rezipped the remains into its own bag and returned them to their drawer, she asked for Officer Protone.

  Jimmy Nix, whose back was turned as he closed the drawer, grimaced. “Why Protone?”

  “He’s a cop and I know him. Shouldn’t I talk to a cop about this?”

  “Do you know another one?” Nix stalled, still not turning to face her.

  Tipsy thought a moment. “There was his partner.”

  “Officer Few,” Nix confirmed sadly.

  “That’s him. Oscar Few. Once you start in on the problem, it’s not a difficult name to remember.”

  “That’s true. I’ll tell you what.” Nix turned around. “Let me get a statement from you and, if I may, a saliva sample.”

  “A saliva sample? What for?”

  “DNA.” Nix angled his thumb toward the drawer behind him. “If that’s your brother, I can release his remains to you. It’ll take about a month.”

  “Oh. I guess—. Sure. Of course.” Then, without thinking about how it might sound, she asked him, “There must be such a thing as having a head cremated—no? Or … or should I bury him … ?”

  The board shack of Jimmy Nix’s reputation began to sag. “I …” he began. “I’m sure that …” He moved a finger toward the entry door. “We maintain a database of crematories and funeral directors. Surely one among them …”

  Eyes moist, Tipsy shook her head.

  Jimmy Nix touched her shoulder. “There’s plenty of time to think about that.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Later, gaining the hall, Tipsy ginned up questions. “What happened to my brother? Where did you find him? Did you find the rest of him? And why can’t I meet with Officers Protone or Few?”

  Jimmy Nix shook his head. “There’s never been a body. And even stranger, Miss Powell, it was Officer Protone who found your brother’s remains.”

  “Really? But where? How?”

  “In a car. Just the head. Before I can tell you anything else,” he added, “I’ll have to find out if somebody replaced Protone on this case yet. It’s a little … cold.”

  She ignored the hint. “Did Protone realize that was my brother?”

  “Not that I ever heard. As far as the file’s concerned,” Nix held up the file, “he’s still John Doe No. 12.”

  Nix felt it in line with department policy that he make no mention of John Doe Nos. 10 and 13, in case Tipsy knew something the department didn’t know, and there seemed no point at all in dragging Laval Williamson into it. At least they knew what happened to Laval, Nix reflected glumly, and who he was. On the other hand, being able to explain only one out of four killings didn’t make for such a hot statistic, and he heard about it at every department meeting he attended.

  “Doesn’t Protone want to talk to me?” Tipsy asked. “I’d certainly like to talk to him.”

  “He can’t.” Nix tapped the file against his trouser leg. “You can’t.”

  “But why not?” she persisted.

  Clearly agitated, Nix abruptly declared, “Lieutenant Protone is deceased.” There, he thought: I am thoroughly fazed.

  Tipsy stopped in her tracks. “I beg your pardon?”

  Nix, who had turned to precede Tipsy down the hall, now turned to face her. There were no windows in this hallway, but there were many doors. A long series of overhead fluorescent lights led, end to end, down the hall to the elevator. “In the course of finding your brother’s remains,” Nix told her, “Officer Protone accidentally killed the perpetrator of an entirely separate crime.”

  “I don’t understand. Separate from what?”

  “In the course of an arrest.” Uncharacteristically upset, Nix shook his head. “He was arresting a petty thief, a smash-and-grab guy. Caught him red-handed. Just some street-level jerkoff.” Nix cleared his throat. “Excuse the expression.”

  “I’m familiar with it.”

  “A professional street-level jerkoff.” Nix’s lips tightened. “A guy not worth the trouble. Just a bum. Nobody to get upset abou
t—” Nix marshaled his composure. “Excuse me. That’s not what I meant to say. If you learn anything working around here,” he pointed the file folder at the door they’d just exited, “it’s that when the grim reaper comes to call, everybody’s a bum. Some, of course,” Nix sucked a tooth, “are more grimily reaped than others. The guy resisted arrest, there was a struggle, Protone accidentally broke the guy’s neck.” Nix sighed raggedly. “Long story short, pending investigation and resolution of the incident, Protone was put on administrative leave.”

  “I imagine that’s standard procedure.”

  “It’s standard procedure, and it’s paid leave.”

  “When,” Tipsy frowned, “did all this happen?”

  “Three, four months ago.” Nix bit his lip.

  Tipsy waited.

  “Vince—that’s Protone—couldn’t handle not working. He just sat around his apartment drinking beer and watching daytime television. A couple of hours at some bar only made things worse. After about two weeks, he shot himself with his service revolver.” Nix’s eyes got distant. “He was in a laundromat.” Now Nix’s voice got distant, too. “Vince told me once he never realized how bad divorce could get until he started spending time in laundromats.”

  Tipsy touched her fingertips to her upper lip. They smelled of formaldehyde. “Oh,” she managed to say, as she dropped her hand. “It sounds like he was a friend of yours.”

  “At one time,” Nix nodded, “we owned a bar together.” He shook his head. “Vince couldn’t handle the proximity to alcohol. Eventually I talked him into selling out to another partner and suggested that he should maybe invest in a bicycle shop or an ice cream parlor, something like that. Anyway, over the past year or so, he was going through bad personal stuff.” Nix moved his hands. “The divorce cost him his house, which he grew up in, half his paycheck, and his car. There were no kids. He was pulling double shifts to get a little coin in circulation, but he was doing it so as to be at home as little as possible, too, home being a converted garage way out in the Avenues. A one-room place, if you didn’t count the bathroom.”

  “The Avenues can be a lonely place,” Tipsy noted sympathetically.

  “He had no ID on him when he topped himself, none of the cops or paramedics on the scene knew him. … I’ll tell you something,” Nix said after a pause. “It was no picnic coming into work and finding Vince Protone on the slab.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Tipsy repeated—stupidly, she thought.

  “That’s okay.” Nix took a deep breath and loudly expelled it. “Thanks. Considering the circumstances, it’s kind of you to say as much.” He looked at her. “I’m sorry about your brother. You said you weren’t close?”

  Tipsy blinked at this. Yes, she had said that. And it was true—yes? She started to shake her head, but she settled for a little wave of her hand.

  “Listen to me,” Nix chastised himself. “It was your brother, for chrissakes. I’m sorry.”

  Tipsy only nodded.

  After a moment of uncertainty Nix stepped aside, and Tipsy preceded him down the hall. The wait for the elevator was interminable. As the doors finally opened, Tipsy thought to ask, “What about …”

  Nix entered the car and sagged into a back corner. The doors closed, and the elevator moved. “Yes?” he said tiredly, raising his eyes to the numerals above the door.

  “What about Officer Few? Did he … Did he get a new partner? I’m sorry,” she added hastily. “I don’t know how this stuff works.”

  “Few …” Nix looked at her, looked down at his shoes, and shook his head. “Few went nuts.”

  “You mean, he was upset?”

  “No,” Nix replied. “I mean he went nuts.” He looked at her. “I mean, of course Oscar was upset by Protone’s death. Very upset. But he was upset about other stuff. The powers that be had been messing with his caseload. He was moonlighting, too, doing security work at conventions and rock concerts, like that, shitty, I mean lousy, excuse me, lousy work for lousy money. So he was worn out. He was also spending a lot of time in conspiracy-oriented chat rooms in pursuit of some line of investigation the brass had pulled him and Protone off of. While he was going through his divorce Protone was basically AWOL, as far as work went. Oscar tried to keep the case alive in his spare time, but the whole deal made him paranoid enough to be overheard talking to himself. They gave him a desk job but supervisor couldn’t keep him off the internet. Then Protone came back and started humping double shifts just like Oscar was. If they’d been working together, they probably would have taken turns falling asleep. But, even though they were a good team, management kept them split up. Protone kicked about the reassignment, he even went to bat for Oscar, unasked I might add, and for his trouble he got re-reassigned to Park Station.” The elevator stopped and the doors parted, but Nix ignored them. “Next thing anybody knew—” Nix caught himself. He tapped the spine of the file against the palm of his empty hand. After a moment he continued, “I guess you could say Protone’s suicide was the straw that broke Oscar’s back. What I meant when I said he went nuts was that he went nuts, that he came unhinged, that he seemed to lose his mind. Long story short, Oscar Few is no longer with the police force. Oscar Few went …” Nix touched the file to his forehead, almost as if he were saluting, then reversed it toward the open doors. “… out. …”

  It developed that putting off calling the number on the business card didn’t make any difference. When Tipsy showed up at the lawyer’s office the Russian was there, too, waiting for her. She’d never met him, of course. At first she thought he was one of the lawyers.

  “Nice trip?” he said, standing up out of a leather chair. He held a Homburg in his left hand.

  “Um,” said the silver-haired lawyer, standing out of his own chair behind a desk, “This is Mr. Vassily Novgorodovich, and I’m Hanford Reach.”

  The Russian offered his free hand and inclined his head. “How do you do.” Tipsy uncertainly returned the handshake.

  Barrister Reach shook her hand in turn, leaning over his desk to do so. “As you no doubt know already,” Reach said, waving her into a vacant chair, “Mr. Novgorodovich is the executor of Quentin’s will.”

  Tipsy, who was almost all the way down in the chair, stood up again.

  “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you, Ms. Powell,” the Russian pointed out. “We were beginning to get a little worried. But by the look of your lovely tan, perhaps you’ve merely been on vacation?”

  “Yes,” Tipsy replied slowly. “My first vacation in … quite a number of years.” She eased into the chair.

  “Oh? How nice for you. And where did you go?”

  “The Caribbean,” Tipsy said, watching him.

  The Russian smiled. “I love the Caribbean.”

  Barrister Reach cleared his throat. “Since neither of us has ever laid eyes on you before, Ms. Powell, I wonder if you might provide us with a photo ID?”

  Tipsy looked at him as if he’d asked a question of a much more personal nature. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s just a formality.” Reach waved a hand and smiled kindly. “We know who you are.”

  Tipsy produced the freshly restored driver’s license. Reach gave it a glance and offered it to the Russian, who waved it away. The lawyer called in a secretary and handed the license to her. “Three copies, please, notarized and witnessed. Just a formality,” he said again, as the secretary left. “So, Ms. Powell, we meet at last. Quentin spoke of you often over the years and never with any less than the highest regard.” Reach tented his hands under his chin, then angled them towards her. “I suppose you also know that you are the sole heir to the estate of Quentin Asche?”

  Two hours later, in front of the law firm’s offices in the 700 block of Montgomery Street, the Russian asked Tipsy if she had it on her.

  She touched the neck of her sweater, where it covered the locket that hung over the hollow of her throat. “You’re that guy, too?”

  “I’m that guy, too.”
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br />   “It’s at my apartment.”

  “Good,” Vassily said.

  “We could meet for coffee tomorrow. Say, ten o’clock?”

  Vassily smiled.

  At her apartment forty-five minutes later, she pulled the necklace with its locket over her head and handed them to him.

  Vassily smiled and shook his head. So she’d had it on her the whole time. He opened the locket and studied its contents. “Gray.” He snapped the locket shut. “Exactly what glasnost did to my hair. Back when I had hair, that is.”

  “I thought it was perestroika.”

  “Nope.” Vassily dangled the locket off its chain.

  “Anyway …”

  “Yes.” Vassily swung the locket onto the palm of his hand. “Nice touch.”

  “Customs didn’t even look at it. By the way?”

  “Yes?”

  “Whose hair is that, exactly?”

  Vassily shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “Well, whose hair do you think it is?”

  “From what I hear, it belonged to a former American president.”

  “That’s what I hear, too. Which party was the guy from?”

  Vassily lifted his hands. “The stress of the highest office turns gray the hair of everybody who holds it.”

  “Damn it,” Tipsy said. “Wouldn’t you like to have some idea of which side of the street you’re working?”

  “Look at it this way,” Vassily suggested.

  “Yes?”

  “It isn’t Ike’s.”

  Tipsy smiled.

  “So.” Vassily polished the face of the locket with the ball of his thumb. “There’s a balance due.”

  “Isn’t that Red’s invoice?”

  “I didn’t take delivery from Red. Did you get it from Red?”

  “You didn’t see him on your way in?” Tipsy asked as nonchalantly as possible.

  Vassily studied her, then smiled. “That guy’s always one step ahead of me. I wonder why?”

  “He’s younger than you are?”

  “Maybe so,” Vassily said mildly.