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

by Shelley Singer

  I had a couple of hours before my lunch appointment with Richmond’s local political buddy, so I called the numbers she’d given me. Two more cousins and a nephew. One of the cousins cried a lot and talked about what a sweet little boy Joe Richmond had been. The nephew admitted he was “politically disappointed” by his uncle’s death. I didn’t know whether that meant he wanted someone of Joe’s beliefs to have political clout or that he wanted some patronage to fall his way when it started being tossed around. The other cousin insisted on seeing me. On the chance that she might actually have something to say, I let myself be dragged out to her upper-middle-class suburb— she hadn’t gotten her share of the family’s money— for what turned out to be an inquisition. She was one of the cousins who had wept at the funeral.

  “So,” she said. “You’re investigating Joe’s death.” I nodded. “Did Marietta hire you?” I shook my head. “Emily?” I shook my head again. “Who, then?”

  “A political associate of his.”

  “A woman, I’ll bet.” I didn’t say anything. “Come on, tell me about her. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, I don’t have much time. So, what makes you so sure the person who hired me is a woman?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Oh, just a wild guess. Joe and women, peanut butter and jelly.”

  Except, I thought, for his wife. “Are you saying Joe had affairs?” His mother had said she assumed he did.

  “Oh, I don’t know. He kind of had that attitude when he was younger. I don’t think people change much.”

  “What about his marriage?”

  She snorted. “What about it? But look, I don’t know about any of that. I guess I was kind of hoping you could fill me in a little… I loved Joe a lot when we were kids. It matters to me what things were like for him, and who might have killed him.” Her eyes filled up. I looked away.

  The rest of the interview went pretty much the same way. She kept trying to pry information about Joe Richmond’s life out of me, I kept trying to get her to tell me something useful. It was a stalemate. After half an hour, I gave up, extended my condolences, and went back downtown for my lunch date.

  It was a nice lunch, and he was a nice guy. He’d known Joe Richmond in the old days when they had both been active in the state’s Democratic Farmer-Labor party. He was working now, he said, to get Vivos in the state legislature. He corroborated the cousin’s impression that Joe and women were peanut butter and jelly. He hadn’t heard anything about any California candidates planning to bolt the party. I did get a line on Joe’s political past, though. He’d served a term on the Minneapolis city council and a term in the state legislature before he had gone off to look after the family’s West Coast interests, become a Green, and dropped out of the business gradually and finally entirely. The two political friends had met again as Vivos.

  “Not much in the way of experience,” I said.

  “Not as an officeholder, no. A lot of dedication, intelligence, and charm, though. He was the best we had.”

  After lunch, I just had time to drop off the rental car and board my plane. No chance to catch the local sights. I was sorry about Minnehaha Falls. And Lake Hiawatha.

  – 18 –

  ROSIE picked me up at San Francisco International. We had a lot to catch up on. First, she insisted on a blow-by-blow of everything that had happened in Minneapolis after that first day.

  “You want it chronologically?”

  “Sure. It’s easier that way. We can figure out what was important after that.”

  I sure as hell hoped we could. The forty-minute drive home didn’t give us quite enough time to cover it all; there was the talk with Ron Lewis, and then the entire funeral to get through, including the unfulfilled promises of Philip Werner. Rosie was very interested in the idea of Werner being a defector.

  “I’ll be very interested in meeting him. When do you want to go to Sacramento?”

  “I don’t know that’s where he went. He could be campaigning anywhere. We’ll have to track him down. Besides, I want a little more general information, a little more background on a lot of things here in town.”

  “Okay, but I don’t think we should let him go too long. He sounds prime to me.”

  We agreed on that. We also agreed that we needed to talk to James X. Carney, who interested me at least as much as Werner, if only because I was enjoying his personality even before we’d met face to face.

  By the time I finished with brother Walter and got to my water torture, we had driven through San Francisco and crossed the Bay Bridge. I tried to make Rosie think my ordeal was funny, but she just wouldn’t go for it.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell the police?” she wanted to know.

  “And get stuck there? What would be the point? You think my pal left fingerprints all over the bathroom? You think maybe someone saw and actually could describe some guy they saw picking my lock? Fat chance. Whoever did it was pretty smooth. Except for having to hit me twice. It would have been a waste of time.”

  She shrugged. “Okay. I guess. But you’re all right?”

  “Sure.”

  She seemed reasonably satisfied with that. She slid her pickup truck into the right lane in front of a red RX7 and took the cutoff to route 24, and, almost immediately, our exit to Fifty-first Street. I was glad to be home, not the least because I still got chilly when I thought of that hotel bathtub. It’s also a hell of a lot easier to work on your home ground, where everything, every street, every neighborhood, is familiar, where you know what to expect from people who look and talk a certain way.

  My ‘53 Chevy was still in one piece, parked as far up in the driveway as I could get it. Not that anything’s ever happened to it before when I’ve been gone, but it was lovingly restored and I’d be pissed off if some asshole kid with a pellet gun shot out the windshield. I might have to spend some time hunting down the parents who were stupid enough to give the gun to the kid in the first place.

  Tigris and Euphrates strolled down the path to meet us, but I didn’t go back to the house. All of us, Rosie, me, the cats, and Rosie’s dog Alice, settled down at Rosie’s cottage for some more talk.

  Rosie had been doing more than her carpentry job in the almost three days I’d been gone. She’d checked out Pam’s alibi, and Ron Lewis’s, too. Pam had been at a meeting all that morning. Lewis had been meeting with Richmond’s contributors, or fan club, or PAC, or recipient committee, or whatever the hell it was called. She’d talked to a bunch of Vivo people and had some preliminary notes she wanted to go over with me. She had, she felt, eliminated some people there was no reason to talk to at all, and made a list of those who might have something we needed. On that list was a Gerda Steiner, who, Rosie reminded me, was the Valkyrie who had guarded the door at the benefit. She was also, Rosie said, a former member of die Grünen— the Greens— in Germany. Gerda’s roommate, Cassandra, was listed, as were Noel the graduate student, money man Carl Maddux, and Rebecca Gelber.

  That sounded like a nice crowd for starters. Of the locals, I was particularly interested in Gelber and Maddux, and I wanted to get a fix on the political and personal relationships of some of these people before I went trotting down south to talk to Carney or tried to catch the elusive Philip Werner. Werner was just begging to be a major suspect, but he’d keep, I thought. And I like to go to my interrogations as well armed with background information as possible. I smiled, recalling my interview with the divine Emily. It might have been easier if I’d had some idea of what she was like. Not to mention Naughty Marietta.

  Rosie wanted to know what I was smiling about, and I told her, realizing that my mind was dithering because I was very tired. I stood up and stretched. “I need to reacquaint myself with my own bed for an hour or so. How about some dinner after that?”

  “Sure. Thai?”

  “Great. Any particular one?”

  “Lampang’s okay?” It was right in the neighborhood, and that sounded good to me.

  “Okay. See yo
u in a while. If I sleep too long and you get hungry, wake me up.”

  “I will. Oh, I almost forgot. Pam called me this morning, wants to hear about the rest of your Minneapolis adventures as soon as possible. And I took some of your phone messages up to this morning. Your father called, wants you to call him. He said any time in the next month is fine.” We both laughed. My father is a martyr. “Your dentist wants to clean your teeth. And Lee wants you to call her. What’s going on, anyway? She sounded weird.”

  “She ought to sound weird,” I snapped. “I’ll tell you at dinner. Maybe you can give me some advice, being a woman and all that.”

  “Yeah, and all that. Right. Every time you screw up your love life you expect me to know how you did it.”

  She patted me on the behind and sent me off to my own house. The cats came with me. I dumped some food in their dishes, changed their water, and went to bed.

  I heard my phone ringing an hour later, but I was groggy and I didn’t want to talk and besides it might be Lee and I wasn’t ready, so I let the machine take it. I lay there for another ten minutes, lifted Tigris off my chest, and got up. When I was well armored in jeans, plaid shirt, sweater, and Reeboks, and had brushed my teeth, I pushed the playback button.

  It wasn’t anyone I thought it would be.

  “Jake, dear, this is Marietta Richmond. I just wanted you to know that I’m on the job. I talked to Ron Lewis— did you know Werner was a crook? Well, maybe a crook? And Walter says he’s paying for part of your investigation. Is that true? I’ve been toying with the idea of coming out to visit you in Berkeley— you are in Berkeley, aren’t you? Or San Francisco?— for a few days, but it looks as if there’s lots to do here. And by the way, I love your message.”

  I live in Oakland, a fact which people seem to find difficult to remember. And my message says, “Hi, this is Jake Samson. Sorry I wasn’t here to take your call. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you. Thanks.” Very creative.

  Rosie was ready and waiting. I gave her the great news about Marietta being hot on the trail of getting herself in trouble and, walking up Lawton to College Avenue, the even more wonderful news about Lee. She laughed and shook her head over Marietta, but the Lee part made her quiet.

  Finally, she said, “Are you sure she isn’t pregnant already?”

  The idea was stunning. I tripped over an uneven square of sidewalk and nearly went down.

  “Why wouldn’t she say so?”

  Rosie shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she wants to feel like she’s giving you a choice.”

  “I’d better call her soon.”

  Rosie looked at me sideways. “You mean you weren’t planning to?”

  “Be a pal, okay?” I whined. “Don’t start telling me I should go along with all this cheerfully, impregnate the woman, and live happily ever after.”

  “You said you wanted advice.”

  “I do. About how to handle this.”

  “You mean how to manipulate your way out of it?”

  “Not necessarily,” I objected.

  “I think what you do is going to depend on how you feel about her. Do you know?”

  We had reached the door of the restaurant.

  “I’m crazy about her,” I said, with absolutely no conviction. Rosie sighed.

  Rosie ordered the duck. I got red curry chicken. The hot stuff, that makes you sweat and cry.

  “Let’s talk about the case,” I suggested. Work is the best escape from life. So we talked. The biggest lead we had so far, about one notch up from suspicions about Werner, was the attack on me in my hotel room. There was a fairly small list of people who were in Minneapolis who knew where I was staying.

  I’d already spent some time on the plane thinking about that. I had left my hotel card with the widow Richmond and Marietta the first day. I had not given a Minneapolis address to Ron Lewis or brother Walter or cousin Francis, the CEO of Richmond Mills. I remembered very well that I had made sure Philip Werner knew where to reach me.

  “Didn’t you say that Pam gave your hotel number to people back here, too?”

  That was true, I had to admit. Which could mean any number of things, including the possibility that someone in the Bay Area had told someone in Minneapolis where to find me.

  Our food came, and we shifted the subject to the work we had immediately before us. We figured out who we were going to talk to and in what order. Rosie, it turned out, had not talked to Gerda, but only to Cassandra.

  “She’s actually pretty strange,” Rosie said. “She kept hinting dark hints, telling me to ask Gerda, saying that yes, she, Cassandra, knew many things.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Exactly. So I thought we should go see Gerda first.”

  I thought that sounded like a good idea. “Is that her real name? Cassandra?”

  “Probably not,” Rosie said, cutting into her duck. I took a big bite of red curry chicken and began to sweat. It would take a little longer before I started to cry.

  – 19 –

  GERDA Steiner lived just a few blocks from us. Rosie had set up an appointment that morning while I’d been on the phone with Pam, filling her in on progress and damages so far, checking some facts, and asking her to get in touch with Walter Richmond. I did not call Lee. I did not call my father. I did not call my dentist.

  Gerda’s house was a converted storefront on one of the side streets west of College Avenue. The display windows were covered on the inside by large sheets of canvas. On one of the canvases someone had painted a large mushroom cloud with the circle-bar symbol for “no” across it. I thought that was a reasonable sentiment. The canvas in the left-hand window was blank, and yellowing around the edges. The glass-paneled door was hung with closed Venetian blinds. I knocked.

  Gerda was waiting for us.

  “Rosie,” she said, smiling. “Please come in.” The look she gave me was politely blank.

  “My name is Jake Samson,” I told her. “I’m a friend of Rosie’s. And Pam’s. We both wanted to talk to you about Joe Richmond.”

  She nodded slowly. “Ja, you are a policeman? The one who helps Rosie?” We were still standing just inside the door.

  “Not a policeman. Rosie’s partner. We’re investigating privately. For Pam.” I had figured out a while ago that it sounds less like I’m pretending to have a license if I say “investigating privately” than if I say I’m a private investigator.

  “Have I seen you somewhere? I think maybe so.”

  “Yes. I was at the benefit. And the meeting a couple of months ago.”

  “Ja. The benefit. With Rosie. I remember now.”

  I was getting impatient. “Do you think we could come in and talk to you?”

  She laughed. Her left cheek dimpled. “Of course. Forgive me.”

  She stepped aside and waved us graciously into a single large room that can best be described, I think, as utilitarian. It appeared to be a combination living room and workroom, a big square space that had probably been a neighborhood grocery in the old days. There was, in addition to the covered storefront windows in front, one small, high window on the back wall. At the right rear was a staircase which I guessed led to sleeping quarters and a kitchen upstairs.

  The room was painted beige, a color that can be either restful or grungy. In this case, it had been painted beige a good ten years earlier. There was a worn brown corduroy sofa— a sofa bed, I guessed at first glance— with black iron-on patches on the arms, and several chairs in various stages of disintegration. One of those fake-wood coffee tables with metal legs sat in front of the sofa. A floor lamp with a drinks tray halfway up its stalk leaned toward the couch. A single scrap of carpeting, five by five, dirty gold and sculptured, protected the peeling blue linoleum from the coffee table’s legs. The chipped beige paint of the walls was covered, here and there, with old posters of various political persuasions. A lot of them had to do with stopping rape. I particularly enjoyed the one that said Disarm Rapists. It looked familiar. I wasn
’t sure where I’d seen it before. At some date’s apartment, I thought, sometime in the late seventies.

  The entire left side of the room was taken up with office equipment: a couple of old typewriters, one of them electric; boxes of paper; poster paints and brushes; a four-drawer file cabinet painted pale green. A dozen or so folding chairs were stacked against the wall.

  Gerda invited us to sit. I perched on a white plastic armchair. She and Rosie sat on the sofa.

  “So. I was glad to know that someone was investigating,” Gerda said, “I am very glad. The police are wrong. He was not a suicide.” She turned serious blue eyes on me, and for the first time I noticed that she was a good-looking woman. The braid wrapped around her head had somehow distracted me, I guess.

  I wanted to ask her why she wore her hair like a Bavarian milkmaid, but I didn’t dare; she probably had some kind of belt in some kind of martial art, and I didn’t feel like fighting. So I stuck to safer subjects.

  “How well did you know Joe Richmond, Gerda?” A safe, ease-into-it kind of question.

  “How well?” She sighed. I waited. “Not so well, after all.” That sounded interesting. Like it was going somewhere. I waited some more, gazing at the perfect white-gold skin of her face and neck. The silence dragged on. I cracked before Rosie did.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that we had met many times. We had talked. But I did not get a chance to know him so well. Not so well as I wanted. I would have, I am sure, but there was not enough time.”

  I studied her. She was looking at me candidly, without the tiniest hint of a smile.

  “I don’t want to pry,” I lied. “But are you saying you wanted to have sex with him and that you think he would have gone along with the idea?”

  “Ja.”

  “What about his marriage?” Rosie asked. She knew as much about his marriage as I did, without actually having met Emily, but I thought I knew where her line of questioning might be leading. “What about his political reputation?”