The Courts of Love

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Did you leave a good message?”

  “It became complicated. I had to do more than was anticipated. It is unfortunate, but Allah knows all, sees all, directs us. We are servants and must not complain.”

  “What’s in the sack?”

  “We’ll get rid of it later. Park in front of the coffee shop. You’ll go in with me.”

  Ali Fava did as he was told. He feared Navin. When Navin was in a dark mood, it was unwise to anger him.

  At twelve Nora Jane started getting dressed. At one she got into the convertible and drove down the steep driveway and out onto Archer Street, which curves along the bay. The blue-green water and the Golden Gate Bridge were lovely in the hazy noon light. Above the bridge long cumulus clouds moved and gathered, hovering over the bay like angels, waiting for a wind to blow them to the shore.

  Nora Jane was sitting up very tall, letting the wind blow her hair. I’m going to meet Delaney Hawk, she was thinking. I might be getting ready to have a career just when I have this baby. Who cares? I can do two or three things at once. It’s a new world. I’d never neglect my children. Grandmother used to take Daddy when she’d tour and he grew up to go to Annapolis. I can feel him in me even if I never knew him, even if he did get blown to smithereens in a stupid war. I’ve got him in me and Grandmother too. I wish she was here today. I was lost and now I’m finding every part of me, that’s how I feel today.

  She took the ramp off the bridge and went down a side street, then turned onto an avenue. Groups of people were strolling along, shopping, standing on corners, walking dogs. Farther down, in the neighborhood of the hotel where Adrien and Sebranek were staying, the people seemed older, old hippies and retired rich people, chic little flower shops and coffee shops, art galleries and shoe stores that sold outrageously expensive shoes.

  As she neared the hotel she saw police cars blocking the street. Even then I didn’t know what it was, she always said later. I didn’t have a clue. So if I’m intuitive it sure wasn’t turned on that day.

  She parked the car and began to walk in the direction of the hotel. I remember hurrying, she would say later. I started walking as fast as I could walk.

  As she approached the small front door of the hotel, she saw four orderlies carrying a covered body on a stretcher. Police were everywhere. The people in the adjacent restaurant were lined up at the bar. Their faces were taut and strained. A tear had been made in the fabric of civilized life. Not down in the projects or poor sections of town, but right here, in Berkeley, near Chez Panisse and Black Oak Books, here, where civilization and peace had been worshiped as gods.

  “It’s a woman,” Nora Jane heard someone say. “It’s some woman writer.”

  A policeman was helping the orderlies load the body into an ambulance. Then the doors were shut and the ambulance driver got into the front seat and drove slowly off.

  Nora Jane stood for a long moment trying to catch her breath. Then she broke through the crowd and found a policeman and took his sleeve. “Who was it? I was coming here to meet Adrien Searle. Tell me that wasn’t who that was on the stretcher.”

  “That’s who it was, lady. Could we have your name? Were you related to Ms. Searle?”

  “I was coming to pick her up. She came to do a book party for my husband yesterday. That’s why she was here. Where’s Sebranek Conrad? Please tell me what happened, what’s going on here?”

  “Come with me.” The policeman led her underneath the wire. He motioned to another officer to take his place, then he led Nora Jane into the hotel. They went past the desk and into a small room where the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office had set up a temporary station. “Here’s a lady who was coming to pick up the victim,” the policeman said, handing her over to a man who seemed to be in charge.

  “I’m sorry you walked into this,” the man said. “Please sit down. Tell us what you know.” He was a nice-looking man with thick strong arms and shoulders that were bulging out of the lightweight fabric of his summer suit. He reminded Nora Jane of the Cajun men in South Louisiana.

  “I don’t even know what happened. Adrien died? She died here? She was killed?”

  “She was stabbed to death. Tell me your name.”

  “I’m Nora Harwood. My husband owns Clara Books. Ms. Searle came out here to do a reading yesterday. She’s the one who wrote that book about the environment that started a congressional investigation. She wrote End of All Springs. That was the book, and lots of other books. She changed people’s lives. How could she die? Someone killed her?”

  “Yes.” He waited, as though expecting her to confess.

  “I’m pregnant. I just found out. I shouldn’t be here like this. Where is Sebranek Conrad? He was with her. I need to call my husband and tell him about this. May I use the phone?”

  “Your husband is the reason she came to San Francisco?”

  “No, her book is the reason. Sebranek Conrad is her editor. He was with her. Where is he? I need to use the phone, please. What is your name?”

  “Jason Hebert. Look, you give me the number. I’ll call your husband.” She told him the number and he dialed it. He hasn’t answered a single one of my questions, Nora Jane was thinking.

  “Hebert is a Louisiana name. I’m from New Orleans.”

  “My folks are from Boutte. I thought I recognized that accent of yours. Wait a minute.” He spoke to someone on the phone, then turned back to her. “Get Mrs. Harwood some water, Jake. Sit down, honey. Sit down and drink that water, will you?” He smiled at her then, a sweet smile. He had eyes so brown and kind and worried that Nora Jane settled down beneath their gaze. Then he turned back to the phone. She could only half hear the conversation he was having with Freddy.

  She looked down at the glass of water the man named Jake had given her. This isn’t true, she decided, this is not happening. That was not Adrien being put into that ambulance. I don’t want it to be anyone. Not anyone at all.

  Jason Hebert turned back to her. “Your husband’s on his way. I wish you’d drink that water. I don’t want a miscarriage on top of a murder this afternoon.”

  “I’d like some bottled water. I can’t drink this. The glass doesn’t even look clean. Tell me what happened, please.”

  “Your friend was stabbed to death sometime this morning and was found about eleven-forty-five by the maid, who let herself into the room to clean. That’s all we know. It was quick and clean and she didn’t put up a fight. Does that help?”

  “No, that’s horrible. It’s terrible. I’m not even sure it’s true. How do you know it was her? It might not have been Adrien. It might be someone else was in her room.”

  He got up and came around the makeshift desk to her chair and took her arm. “Go get some bottled water out of the bar, Jake,” he said. “And bring a clean glass.” Nora Jane looked up and met those eyes again, extraordinary eyes. The eyes of an altar boy, a darkened church on Poydras or Melepomene. Incense, the Mass being read in Latin, death and the smell of death. “You okay?” he asked.

  “No, no, I’m not okay at all.” Then she began to cry and he reached in his pocket and took out a white handkerchief and handed it to her.

  “Can you help us at all?” he asked, when the tears had subsided and she looked at him again. “Tell us who might have done this. Anything you know. Any enemies she had.”

  “Who knows. Anyone can hate a writer who writes the truth about the world. Anyone can fixate on a writer or stalk them or think they own them because they read their books. Things like that happen. But I never met Adrien Searle until yesterday. She wasn’t someone who made enemies. She was this very sweet older lady who was like a mother to everyone. She wasn’t someone who gets killed out of hate. Maybe it was a robbery. Did they steal things?”

  “Not that we noticed. She had on a watch and rings, and her pocketbook wasn’t touched.”

  “I don’t know. Let me think.” Nora Jane was crying again. At the thought of the day that had begun so brilliantly and now had ended like this
. This was like her childhood had been, fear and anger and uncertainty. Evil that seemed to come from nowhere and darken the sun. One moment her mother would be sober and trying to get in good with her. The next moment she was crying and begging for help and saying she was going to die. Then I went to Grandmother, Nora Jane remembered. I’d walk over there day or night even when I was so little. I’d walk across Magazine Street by myself at night when I was seven years old. I still don’t know why I never got run over.

  Then Freddy was there, having parked his car on the street behind the police barricade. “I left my automobile on the street,” he told Jason Hebert. “See if you can keep them from towing it. It’s a dark blue Honda. Are you all right?” He turned to Nora Jane.

  “I don’t know. I saw them carrying her out. Where is Sebranek?”

  “Mr. Conrad is upstairs with our physician,” Jason answered. It was as though he had decided it was all right to answer her questions now that Freddy was here. “He’s in shock. He returned after we got here. He identified the body. What do you know about his son Johnnie? Do you know where he lives?”

  “What does Johnnie have to do with it?” Freddy asked.

  “We don’t know,” Jason answered. “But we need to talk to him. Do you know where he lives?”

  “No. He comes in the store occasionally but I don’t think he lives in this part of town. Ask Sebranek. He knows where he is.”

  “We have asked him. I need the two of you to come down to the station and give us a statement sometime today.”

  “Johnnie Conrad’s not involved in this.” Freddy stood up very close to Jason and looked him in the eye. “Don’t go running down blind alleys while the murderer gets away. I promise you, Johnnie Conrad wouldn’t kill anyone. He probably doesn’t even eat meat. What are you people thinking?”

  “Two people saw a young man fitting his description hurrying through the lobby at eleven o’clock. They noticed him because he was in such a hurry. He showed up yesterday at her reading, didn’t he?”

  “How did you know that? Where are you getting all this information? Johnnie Conrad wouldn’t have any reason to kill Adrien Searle.”

  “She broke up his parents’ marriage, didn’t she?” It became very quiet in the room. Nora Jane stood up and went to Freddy. A chill went through her. They weren’t kidding. This wasn’t a television movie. They thought Sebranek’s son was involved in this.

  A detective entered the room. “We found the Conrad kid,” he said. “He’s running some kind of after-school program down in Soweto. They took him downtown.”

  “I want to see Sebranek,” Freddy said. “You can’t be holding him. He needs us. Take us to him before I start calling lawyers, and that’s not an idle threat.”

  “No need for that. I’m sorry this has been so bad for your wife. Jake, go see if Mr. Conrad can come down here. We’ll wrap this up and seal off the room and then we’ll get downtown. I wish we hadn’t walked on that hall carpet. Roll it up and bring it down.”

  “I took it up an hour ago. You didn’t notice?”

  “Good. Start talking, Mr. Harwood. Tell me what you know.”

  “She had enemies. Every anti-environmental person in the West thinks she’s the Antichrist. Also, Sebranek publishes Salman Rushdie. Did anyone tell you that? They both surf the edge. It could be anyone, it could be random violence. What it isn’t, is anything to do with Sebranek Conrad’s son, who graduated, I’m pretty sure of this, summa cum laude from Cornell. That divorce is old, old stuff. Where did you get the idea that the boy they saw in the hall was Johnnie Conrad? What have you been smoking?”

  Freddy was getting mad, a dangerous thing. He was the only son of an extremely wealthy woman who had indulged his every wish since the day he was born. He had firms of lawyers at his beck and call. A detective from the San Francisco police department was nothing to him. Ninety-nine percent of the time he went about his life as if he were an ordinary person. He cultivated wearing old clothes and never letting anyone see his power, but when the one-quarter Irish blood his mother had bequeathed him rose to the top, he boiled. Nora Jane had not seen it often but she had seen it enough to be frightened by it. For all she knew Freddy might haul off and hit Jason Hebert and then they’d both go to jail.

  “Oh, please,” she said. “This is not the time for this. Please, Freddy, settle down. We have to talk to Sebranek. Think how he’s feeling.”

  “The maid knew Johnnie,” Jason said. “She used to be his girlfriend.”

  Then Sebranek was there and they surrounded him and embraced him and tried to find a way to comfort him but there was no comfort. “Come home with us,” Freddy pleaded. “Come to our house.”

  “I have to go downtown and see about Johnnie. They saw him here. Of course it’s some coincidence, but we have to straighten it out.” Sebranek pushed them away. He turned to Jason. “Have they found my son?”

  “He’s on his way downtown. We’ll take you with us. Jake, did you see about Mr. Harwood’s car?”

  “It’s right where he left it. Jim’s with it.”

  They went out onto the street and found Freddy’s car. “Let me drive you,” Freddy said to Nora Jane.

  “No, I don’t want to leave the car. I’ll follow you.”

  “I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  “I have to take my car home, Freddy. It might get towed.”

  They stood in the middle of the police barricade, a uniformed policeman holding the car door open. “This is like Vonnegut’s description of space travelers looking down on the earth and thinking the inhabitants are little steel automobiles being served by four-limbed bits of protoplasm. Leave the goddamn car there, Nora Jane. We’ll send somebody for it.”

  “I can drive it. I’m better than you are. At least I didn’t threaten a detective.”

  “I’m going to sue some detectives. That was the most inhumane little meeting of minds I’ve yet encountered. This woman, his love, is dead, murdered, and they’re treating him like a suspect.”

  “Why would Johnnie have been there?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ll find out, won’t we.” He let her go then and she got into her car and drove slowly home and he followed her. Once or twice he turned on the radio to see if it had made the news but all he could get was music and an update on the weather.

  Two hours later Freddy and Nora Jane and Freddy’s best friend, Nieman, and Freddy’s bookkeeper, Frances, were in the Harwood living room manning phones. The media had the story now and were playing it for all it was worth. It had been a godsend to the media. There was no foreign news of interest to the citizens of the United States and no new scandals in Washington. What scandals there were concerned money and banks and bond fraud. Americans are too healthy to stay interested for long in theft. Murder and passion and revenge are what the American public likes on a nice spring day, and Adrien Searle’s death promised all that and more.

  Nieman and Freddy were doing what they could to control the damage. They were calling in their chits with reporters all over the country. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNN, the Associated Press, the United Press. All three phones were ringing without stop as reporters they knew called back and forth gathering parts of the story. Johnnie was being held for questioning and the media had gotten hold of the Conrads’ divorce and Johnnie’s years of therapy and Sebranek’s ex-wife’s crippling arthritis and her brother’s unsuccessful Senate race and Sebranek’s rise to literary fame and the Rushdie connection.

  “Take a break,” Freddy said at dusk. “Turn the phones off and let’s eat something. Where are the girls, Nora Jane?”

  “They’re here. They’re fine.” She pulled the master phone plug out of the wall and the four friends turned to face each other on the white chairs Freddy had bought when he was in his Scandinavian mood.

  “They’ll have Adrien’s sons in it by night,” Nieman was saying. “Didn’t you tell me she doesn’t talk to one of them? Th
at’s pathological enough to occupy a day’s news, wouldn’t you say? This is turning into a mess, a real mess.”

  “It’s already a mess. Adrien’s dead.” Nora Jane got up and took Nieman’s glass to fill it. He was drinking wine.

  “‘Things fall apart,”’ Freddy quoted, ‘“the center cannot hold. . . .The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ Yeats. This is the tip of the iceberg, Nieman. You and I know Johnnie didn’t kill Adrien, and in the meantime whoever did is running the streets of San Francisco. I’m thinking of sending Nora Jane and the girls down to the Baja to Mother’s place.”

  “You are not sending me anywhere. What is it, darling?” Tammili had come to stand in the door.

  “May I use the phone now? Tara thinks I’m going to call her. She’s going to get mad at me and we just made up. If I don’t call her she’s going to get mad again.”

  “Of course you may call her. Come over here. What’s that in your hair?”

  “Lydia’s making dreadlocks. She made me one.”

  “Come here to me, goddaughter of my heart.” Nieman held out his hands to her. “A friend died, Tammili. But it will never touch you in any way. We are calling reporters so they won’t write foolishness in their newspapers. We are trying to maintain civilization and that is why the phones have been busy. What’s this about your friend Tara? Your friendship is in danger, fraught with people getting mad?”

  “Don’t laugh at me,” she said, but she went to him and let him hug her and he plugged in a phone and helped her dial her friend, having to cut out incoming signals as they dialed.

  “She wants me to come over,” Tammili said, when she had hung up the phone. “It’s not dark yet. May I ride my bike to her house?”