Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series)

by Shelley Singer

  Then he shook my hand, told Pam he’d see her later, and moved away. I caught a glimpse of Rosie, in the middle of the circle around Gelber. She was talking to the candidate, and her ears— Rosie’s, that is— were pink with joy. Pam touched my arm.

  “Listen, Jake, I’ve got to take care of some business right now, but you’re going back to the East Bay later, right?” I nodded. “I wonder if I could beg a ride with you? I came over with someone who’s staying in the city.” I told her sure, Rosie and I would be delighted. She patted my shoulder, smiled— she liked me again— and went to talk to the graduate student. Then intermission was over, and the aging rock star came on to shrieks of audience happiness. He was pretty good, but not as good as I remembered. The impressionist was better.

  – 4 –

  NOT every woman, or every man for that matter, is capable of appreciating a 1953 blue-and-white Chevy Bel Air. One of the things I’d first liked about Lee— besides the way she talked, looked, and moved— was her admiration for my admirable classic.

  But Lee was a problem. Besides a tendency to work ten or twelve hours a day, she also got involved in community projects a lot. She would work herself into a state, sometimes, and drop out of sight for weeks. Of course, I could respect that, and understand it. But I didn’t like it much.

  So I was pleased when Pam showed good judgment about cars, too.

  “Beautiful,” she said, standing back a couple of feet to admire it. “I think my mother had one of these.”

  Rosie slid unobtrusively into the back seat, so Pam took the passenger side next to me. She was quiet going over the bridge, responding briefly to my comments about Three Mile Island, her own performance, and the old rock star. When I said I thought Joe Richmond was one terrific guy, she said, “Yes.” Rosie brought up her conversation with Rebecca Gelber, and we got some mileage out of that.

  Rosie said she had admired Gelber’s work for years and had been thrilled to finally get a chance to talk to her. Not only had Gelber been involved in environmental causes for a long time, she had been one of the early and leading lights of the women’s movement back in the sixties. She hadn’t spent a lot of time in the spotlight, but she’d dipped at least one hand in everything that had ever amounted to anything. The name had, now that I thought of it, sounded vaguely familiar.

  Pam admitted that deciding between Gelber and Richmond had not been easy for her. She didn’t say what had finally convinced her. We crossed the bridge and headed for Berkeley. She directed me to the University Avenue exit. I drove all the way up University, turned north to go several blocks, then east again toward the hills. The house was not in anything like the same class as the Pacific Heights mansion, but it was big enough and nice enough. She’d inherited it, she said, from her mother. When she invited us in, I accepted happily, looking at Rosie for confirmation. She seemed to think it was a good idea.

  The living room had a big fireplace that projected round like an igloo from the plastered wall. But the look was Southwest. Pueblo? I don’t know. All the doorways were rounded arches. The rug was definitely Southwest Indian, the furniture overstuffed and in earth colors. There were two paintings in the living room, both by that guy who paints Indians. I liked the room a lot. She offered us wine, and we sat down.

  We didn’t stay long. We talked about the Vivos, about the convention that was coming in just a month. Somehow, the way Pam explained it, the Vivo election plan didn’t sound quite as ridiculous— not quite— as it had seemed at first. There’s a lot of stuff involved in becoming a real party: You have to caucus and choose officers. You have to file formal notice with the secretary of state, who then lets the counties know they should be on the lookout for the number of voters registering as members of your party. If you can register a number equal to one percent of the total vote in the last election for governor, you qualify. Or you can go another route, the one the Vivos had tried, and qualify by petition, collecting signatures equal to ten percent of the total vote. What that all means, though, is you have to convince that many people to actually change their party registration. And if you don’t register as a member of a major party, you can’t vote in a major party’s primary. Tends to keep the old two-party system safe.

  The Vivos had managed to have a caucus, but since hardly anyone had ever heard of them, they had a little trouble filling the rest of the requirements. So their candidate would run in November as an independent, not as the candidate of a bona fide party. Much easier route, she explained. All it takes for an individual to qualify as an independent is the signatures of about 150,000 registered voters who think he or she should be allowed to run. No one has to give up being a Democrat or a Republican; no one has to be willing to give up the right to vote in the primaries.

  But this was just a first step, Pam said. This campaign would bring them a larger following, would create public confidence in the Vivos. And next time around, they would qualify as a party. Easily.

  Pie in the sky by and by, I was thinking.

  Pam didn’t go on and on about it, though. I was grateful when she asked a few questions about some of the detective work Rosie and I had done. We were fascinating.

  I guess she must have liked me. I guess she probably thought I was the greatest detective since Sam Spade. When I thought about it that way, it wasn’t too surprising that she called me the next day because she’d found Joe Richmond hanging from her acacia tree.

  – 5 –

  PAM came out after making her call to the police, grabbed my arm and turned me away from the hanging man.

  “All right, I called them. But tell me what to say. You’re a detective. What should I say? About his dying here?”

  “Unless you killed him,” I said, “you should probably tell them the truth. How about I ask you some questions?” She nodded uncertainly. “First, what was he doing at your house naked?”

  “Using the hot tub, I suppose.”

  “Was he staying here with you?”

  “No. In the city. I guess he wanted to get away from the people, and the work…”

  “You guess? You weren’t here?”

  “No. I was meeting with some of the campaign workers.”

  “And he just came over on his own?”

  She was sitting in one of her overstuffed couches. She waved her hand at me in exhausted irritation. “I guess so. He knew he was welcome, when he needed to escape.”

  “He had a key?”

  That really annoyed her. “Of course he did. I’m one of his local campaign managers, for God’s sake.”

  I wasn’t so sure that necessarily followed, but I ran out of time. The Berkeley police rang the bell. They were charming, as they always are. I guess they have to be.

  The two patrolmen did what they’re supposed to do with a crime scene— they kept it safe for the bigger guns and did all the preliminary roping off, tucking away, and checking out.

  They hustled Pam and me into separate rooms. I got the kitchen, with a view of the hanging tree. I gave my cop what he asked for— personal information and everything I knew about what had happened to Joe Richmond. I didn’t say anything about my conversation with Pam just before they got there. They were handling it all very seriously, treating it like a homicide. But that’s the form. I was a cop once, for a while, back in the late sixties in Chicago. Long enough to have gotten a couple of calls like the one these guys had gotten. There was a jumper, took a dive off a high rise on the North Side. I roped off everything I could think of— the sidewalk with corpse, the roof, the stairs, the elevator. We kept all the witnesses and residents nailed down for homicide. Much to my disappointment, it turned out the guy had really jumped.

  I wasn’t with the force more than another year or so after that. I left the cops, and Chicago, right after the ‘68 Democratic Convention. Right after the big cops-and-yippies riots. After I’d watched everyone go crazy and bust heads. Including me.

  Anyway, I confessed that I had dragged the bench across the yard to peek into Richmon
d’s eyes, and that Pam had used the phone in the room closest to the corpse to call them. I didn’t know what phone she’d used to call me.

  The homicide guys arrived, and the coroner’s man, and the lab people. Richmond was cut down carefully, with the noose still intact around his neck, and hauled away. The homicide detective who talked to me— Sergeant Cotter, his name was— picked up where the uniform had left off and went over some of the same ground, as well. Yes, I had “touched things” at the scene. No, I had neither touched nor seen a suicide note. I said I didn’t think they’d find one. Cotter, a large, pale blond man, just looked sleepy-eyed when I volunteered my opinion. Then they hauled Pam and me off to the station to give our formal statements.

  Again, we were stuck in separate rooms. Again, my inquisitor was Sergeant Cotter.

  “So, Mr. Samson. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Cotter was being a nice guy, trying to get me to relax. I have to admit I was wound up pretty tight. I didn’t think coffee would help but I accepted some anyway. It was something to fiddle with. Smoking may kill you, but it gives you something to do when you feel like you need something to do.

  The coffee was terrible, whitened with that artificial stuff they make out of pure cholesterol. It didn’t do much to make me feel better.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened, from the beginning?” Cotter lit a cigarette. “Okay if I smoke?”

  I nodded.

  “Want one?”

  Of course I wanted one, but it had been several years since I’d had one and I wasn’t going to lose it now. I shook my head and told him that Pam had come home and found her candidate hanging from an acacia. That she had called me. That I had rushed right over and checked to make sure the man was dead. That Pam had called the police.

  “Nice synopsis,” Cotter said. “Why did she call you before she called the police?”

  “You’ll have to ask her that, but I guess it’s because she was upset. We’re friends.” That was true in a way, and I sure couldn’t tell him she’d called me because I was an unlicensed private detective and she’d gotten scared.

  “Uh huh. Friends. And this guy Richmond? What was he doing at her house?”

  I explained, as well as I could, about Richmond’s campaign, about her part in it.

  “And how do you feel about the fact that he was running around her house naked?”

  I looked at him, my face as blank as I could make it. “I guess he was taking a hot tub.”

  “And where was Ms. Sutherland at the time?”

  “You’ll have to ask her that.”

  “But she was at home when she called you.”

  “That’s where she found the body.”

  “And where were you?”

  “At home.”

  We rested, each sipping coffee. “How do you feel about the fact that he was at her house?”

  “Fine.”

  “And how does his wife feel about it? He does have a wife?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Where were you this morning? Until Ms. Sutherland called you?”

  “I was having brunch with a friend until a little before she called. She called about fifteen minutes after I got home.” All true. Rosie was the friend.

  He poked around in my brain some more, and I told him what I could about Richmond and about the Vivo party. He asked me if I knew anything that might have caused the man to kill himself.

  That was a tough question, since Pam and I seemed to be suspects. Still, we both had alibis, and I decided to say what I thought. Maybe that would make me less suspect.

  “I don’t know any reason. People worshipped the guy. He was running for governor.”

  Cotter looked skeptical, and I could almost hear his cop’s mind working. Yes, he was running for governor. In a campaign that couldn’t win. A weirdo campaign. And he ran around naked at other people’s houses. Women’s houses.

  He let me go, telling me he’d be in touch.

  The thing was, everything pointed to suicide. The weapon, the rope, was right there at the scene, wrapped around his neck. The stool he’d kicked over was right there. It certainly looked like the guy had done it to himself. But the answers, as far as the police were concerned, would lie in the autopsy and in any information they could collect about Richmond’s state of mind.

  I went back to Pam’s place with her. We huddled in the living room, away from the hanging tree, away from the police barriers. There was still a guy scraping around in the yard. Half the house had been dusted. We drank some burgundy and talked, softly, about our interrogations.

  “Once they stop suspecting you and me,” Pam said, “they’re going to decide he killed himself, Jake.”

  “They’ve still got a way to go before anyone can say that,” I insisted. “The coroner will be able to tell. He’s the one who says it’s suicide. Or not.”

  “I don’t care what anyone says. He didn’t do it. And if they say he did, I want you and Rosie to prove otherwise.”

  A few days later, Rosie and I were in business, working for Pam.

  – 6 –

  ONCE the suicide verdict came out of the coroner’s office, the police investigation was effectively over. I guess, in a way, I was surprised. I wondered if the police were satisfied, really, that they had gone deep enough. There’s such a thing as a psychological autopsy, I know, as well as the chop job they always do on the body.

  The press had reacted with some hysteria to Richmond’s death, thrilled by what looked like the murder of a fringe party leader. The front-page excitement was matched, for a day or two, by their handling of letters to the editor— like the one the Chronicle headlined “Lynching in Berkeley?” But suicide is less sensational than murder, and pathetic as well, and the story died with the verdict.

  Pam wanted to meet with Rosie and me right away to kick off the investigation. I put her off for a day. I wanted to do a little preliminary nosing around before I jumped in. Besides which, I had a date with Lee that night and it had been a long time.

  Rosie was eager to get started, but she had a job to clean up first and couldn’t get involved full time yet. Between investigations I slop along on her rent and an annuity from my mother. Rosie depends on her carpentry. I would have to start the case myself.

  The first thing I needed to do was get some gears turning so I could find out what the cops knew about Richmond’s death— the autopsy findings and whatever else they had that convinced them there was nothing more to learn.

  I called my buddy Hal Winter, hoping I could impose on him to do a little snooping for me once again. Hal’s a Berkeley attorney with connections in the DA’s office. He doesn’t owe me a thing. But we’ve been friends for years, and he once said he was keeping books on the favors he does for me. One of these days he’ll collect. One of these days I’ll find a way to pay him back.

  He was in his office, but he was on another line and could he call me right back? Sure, I said.

  I popped a beer and sat on my front steps in the sun. The morning fog was breaking up and the first noontime rays were coming through. The house was chilly, the sun was warm.

  I was thinking about Pam. About how she’d found the body. About their friendship or whatever it was. About her alibi, which seemed good. We’d check it out, just as a matter of form. Sure, she was the one who was insisting he hadn’t killed himself— a pretty stupid move for a murderer. But just on the off chance that she was totally nuts, which is always possible, we’d check it out.

  The phone rang. It was Hal.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Let me guess. Why don’t you get yourself a license and admit you’re doing this stuff, Jake-o?”

  “Do you have any idea what a guy has to go through to get a P.I. license?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. Look, I know I already owe you. Let me owe you one more.”

  He sighed. “When I get it back, I’m going to get it back good.”

  “Sure, you bet you are, a
nything you say. It’s about that guy named Joe Richmond. The politician.”

  “Oh, yeah. The guy who bumped himself off in an ecologically sound manner. Something to do with a tree, I believe?”

  “That’s the one.” I explained what I wanted— information about the coroner’s report.

  “It was a suicide,” Hal said. “The guy hanged himself. Right?”

  “That’s what the cops think.”

  “And somebody with money to burn thinks otherwise.”

  “So do I.” At least I thought I did.

  “Well, I’ll see what I can get. When do you need it?”

  “It’s kind of important, but…”

  “Cute. I’ll try to get back to you this afternoon. I think I can squeeze it into my overloaded workday. If not, first thing tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, pal.”

  “Sure, buddy.”

  I was going to have to find some way to pay him back real soon.

  I took my half-can of beer and strolled up to the vegetable garden.

  I guess I’d better describe my lot. When I first bought it, there was a big unfenced front yard that consisted of a dirt driveway and a vegetable garden. Behind that were a couple of acacia trees and a 500-square-foot building that not even the realtor dared describe as a cottage. A previous tenant, a lover of plants but no lover of plants in pots, had let the Algerian ivy grow through the walls, roof, and floors. It was very pretty.

  Behind that was the front yard of what was called, by the real-estate agent, “the house.” This was a 600-square-foot stucco box made up of four tiny rooms and a pantry.

  There are some big differences now. The driveway is gravel. The front is fenced, to meet the neighbors’ fences on either side, and I put in some roses. There are two more trees and a lot more flowers— mostly geraniums, which I don’t like much but are easy to grow— back around the house. The house now has three rooms and a pantry, and a Franklin fireplace in the doubled but still small living room.

  I lucked out on the cottage. Among the prospective tenants who came to look at it— most of them turned pale even though I was practically giving it away “until the roof is fixed”— was Rosie Vicente. We struck a deal. She’d rebuild the charming, tree-and-rose-draped hovel for a big reduction in rent over the time of remodeling. Then the rent would begin to move up toward market. At first I was skeptical. I had never met a woman carpenter and wondered if she was strong enough to do the work. I wondered if she knew what she was doing. Rosie dated women instead of men and was good-looking enough to disturb my equilibrium, too. Could we be friends? Could we keep our deal? It turned out she was strong enough and knew what she was doing. The deal worked just fine. The cottage is still a little lopsided, because we decided not to replace all the walls, but it’s solid and it’s pretty and the inside is paneled with real pine and the sun shines in the skylights and the Franklin stove she installed heats the place perfectly all winter.