Stray Cat Blues

by Robert Bucchianeri

  “You shouldn’t believe everything you read in a rag like that, Coleman,” Marsh quipped.

  “I told ya, Chris. Boss is no Wall Street guy. He’s a straight shooter.”

  “Shit,” Chris muttered.

  “Yeah. You’re buying me lunch at Cassie’s and as much beer as I can drink tonight at Freebo’s, buddy.” Castro laughed.

  Marsh hadn’t answered the question, but they were satisfied.

  “The Blue Notes happen to have an office not too far from here,” Marsh said.

  “Tell me more.”

  We were in a little construction shack on Owens Street. Marsh sat behind a metal desk covered with stained blueprints, used styrofoam cups, scattered multicolored pencils, and a couple of empty Twinkie wrappers.

  He explained that he’d found out through his network of contacts in government and political circles that the Blue Notes were far from incognito to the powers-that-be. They were on the police’s radar, although so far their activities had not risen to the level of a public crisis that would necessitate a big response. Harassment and on-the-spot pursuit were currently being used to adequate effect, although from what Marsh’s contacts gathered, the gang was successful, growing, and flush with money garnered from their primary activities—drugs, with an emphasis on feeding the epidemic in painkiller addiction, and prostitution, along with various protection rackets pressuring small local businesses. It was the latter that most concerned authorities and threatened the greatest retaliation.

  He said that top members of the gang were known to hang out at Funky Jack’s, a bar on Harrison. It was rumored that two members owned it and that there was an office in back that served as a kind of headquarters for the group.

  Caballo Negro, the Black Horse himself, and his minions often gathered there to plan and party.

  Marsh didn’t know whether Vince and Scooter were among the elite, but it was a place to start.

  It was mid-afternoon by then, and Marsh had appointments for the rest of the day.

  I only had one, for dinner with Alexandra, but on the basis of that, the memory of our date still potent in my mind, I decided the Blue Notes could wait on us for one more day.

  Marsh was going to check the place out tonight, and we tentatively planned to meet here and get over to Funky Jack’s at 6 p.m. tomorrow.

  I stood to go, but hesitated, standing above him, and said, “How did you make your money? I thought you were a trader when you were merely a callow youth?”

  Marsh stared into my eyes for a few seconds, and his expression didn’t change from a look of casual nonchalance. “I have been many things, in my youth and out of it. But, my friend, the true story of me and money is full of nuance and complexity. Let’s save it for another day.”

  I nodded and accepted his answer for what it was. I knew that it was all I was going to get until he was ready to give more.

  Twelve

  Alexandra’s cozy Victorian on Octavia in Pacific Heights was sandwiched between a refurbished mansion and a small apartment building with a neo-gothic exterior currently being converted to tiny condominiums with seven-figure asking prices.

  I could smell the garlic, olive oil, and tomato sauce out on her front steps, and it perplexed me.

  She opened the door moments after I knocked and kissed me once hard on the lips. She wrapped her arm around my waist and escorted me inside. “I thought we’d eat in tonight.”

  I liked the idea, but Alexandra almost never cooked beyond French toast for breakfast, her specialty. It wasn’t that she couldn’t. It was just that the idea of planning a menu was as foreign to her as the intricacies of sewing and origami—both of which she did in her rare spare time—were to me.

  “Smells great,” I said as we crossed the family room with its blond hardwood floors, pastel-colored couches and chairs, and wainscoted walls.

  “You cooked?”

  “I wish. It’s from this new place, Emilio’s, that opened down on Lombard a couple months ago. Their eggplant parm is to die for.”

  “Hmmm.” My mouth was watering, but not for eggplant. Alex wore a loose-fitting top and yoga pants. There wasn’t an eggplant parm on Earth that could possibly compete.

  I grabbed her, spun her around, and kissed her again for a long time. Finally, she broke my clutch.

  “Honey, no. Dinner’s almost ready. I’ve got garlic bread and asparagus and sautéed broccolini and creme puffs from Victoria Pastry for dessert.”

  “Don’t need dessert. I’ve got you.” I reached for her again, but she slipped out of my grasp, laughing, and took my hand, dragging me into the kitchen, but keeping me at arm’s length.

  Emilio was to be congratulated on one of the best eggplant parms I’d ever tasted, and I’d sampled more than a few.

  We were splitting a custard creme puff, with decaf espresso from Alexandra’s Nespresso machine.

  Alexandra looked better than all the creme puffs in the world in her black yoga pants and the peach top that I’d been peeking down whenever she leaned over while we ate. She’d catch me and motion naughty naughty with her finger, but with a twinkle in her eye.

  “I got a movie,” she said, as I sipped the last of my demitasse of espresso.

  “Don’t want to watch anything but you.”

  “Tough. I’ve wanted to see this forever and tonight’s the night. It’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, and I managed to miss it in the theaters.”

  I sighed.

  “You’ll get your reward afterward,” she said, rising and grabbing our plates. “Help me clean up. The sooner we start the movie, the sooner...” Her voice trailed off suggestively.

  The movie was almost worth the wait. Whether or not it was a masterpiece, Anderson is the most interesting filmmaker working.

  Near the end of the movie, Alexandra’s phone hummed and played Pachelbel’s Canon, which I knew signaled a call from her editor. She looked at it for a moment but immediately turned back to the screen and let it go to voicemail.

  As soon as we’d studied the credits, she picked up her phone and listened. Then she scrunched up her features and gave me a long, sympathetic look.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” she responded, with a pout.

  “Want to go to the airport with me?”

  I said a multisyllabic bad word that made her erupt in laughter.

  Thirteen

  I was back on that front porch jungle, one last time.

  I was sure I wouldn’t ever step foot here again after tonight.

  The smell was still pungent, weedy, the vanilla still noticeable. But I sensed putrefaction, all the wildflowers going to seed.

  Maybe it was just me.

  I’d knocked twice then rang the bell.

  I waited. I could hear rustling at the back of the house.

  Maggie finally answered, wearing a long t-shirt, one of Leonard’s, the Grateful Dead huddled around a campfire. Jerry Garcia’s grizzled features smiled out at the world in bemusement. He always seemed a little baffled to me, a byproduct of all the drugs he’d ingested.

  She didn’t look surprised to see me. She didn’t say a word but stepped back inside and disappeared into the front room. I entered the house and gently closed the door behind me.

  It smelled worse inside. The air was stale. I’d guess a window hadn’t been opened in days. It felt like everything in that house was rotting.

  I joined Maggie in the front room, sitting on an uncomfortable chair, made out of cheap wood, in front of a bean bag across from where she sat on a decrepit love seat. She sat with her hands resting on her knees and her eyes cast to the floor.

  My mind had been a blank on the ride over, and now I took my time composing my thoughts, my questions. My investigation was ending right about where it had started.

  It seemed surprising, but thinking about it right then and there, it all made a horrific kind of sense. So much had happened. Johnnie’s life had been so involved with so many weak and/or troubled and dangerous men. Th
ere were so many motives and cross purposes that it shouldn’t have been so surprising that the truth—so evident now—had been so hard to cull out from the entanglements. As difficult as finding a single snapdragon in that tropical jungle that Maggie cultivated and let run wild on her front porch.

  “Maggie, tell me what happened when you told Leonard you were pregnant.”

  She hardly reacted. There was no alarm or protest in her voice, just a depressing resignation. “He got mad at me. For allowing it to happen. I claimed it was an accident.” Suddenly, a pathetic sob escaped her throat, but she strangled it, gasped, gathered herself. “He didn’t know I’d stopped taking the pill.”

  “Why?” I said.

  She looked up at me for the first time, a look of stunned puzzlement on her face. “To make him see.”

  She searched my face for understanding.

  “Make him see what, Maggie?”

  “See how much I loved him. How much I cared. See how she would never love him in the same way.” She looked away awkwardly, having exposed herself completely.

  “Did he ever express a desire for a child?”

  “No,” she answered quickly. “No, but I could tell. I knew it would bind us like nothing else. He was obsessed with her. Men can’t help themselves with a woman like her. She used him. I tried to tell her...I...” She sobbed again, covering her eyes with trembling hands.

  “Maggie...”

  “She could have just about any man she wanted. I told her Leonard was all I had. I told her I’d do anything, give her money, if she’d just leave him be.”

  The house was deathly quiet, just rotting away moment after moment.

  I didn’t want to hear the answer to my next question, but I had to ask it.

  “How did she respond?”

  “She said she’d only...” she stopped, winced, her face scrunched in anguish, “...been with him once. She said she had no interest in him, other than the business. She said I could have him.” She paused, wiped the tears from her face. “That made me mad. She wouldn’t leave. She said as soon as she made enough money, she’d find a better place for her and Frankie, but she had nowhere to go. In the meantime, he was crazy about her. I couldn’t take it. I didn’t know what to do. I stopped taking the pill. We hadn’t made love for months. I got him to drinking, and then I seduced him.” She paused again, then said, “I got pregnant.”

  “When did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t, not at first. I told Johnnie first. I told her the night when Leonard was away, visiting his parents in Bakersfield. He did that once a year. Frankie was out, too. With a friend, I think.”

  “What did Johnnie say?”

  “She told me how stupid I was. How Leonard was a weak man and would never be a good father or husband. I told her she had to leave right then and there. I told her to get out...”

  She stopped and I waited.

  After a while, Maggie continued. “She refused. She laughed. I don’t why. I think I took it the wrong way, maybe she wasn’t ridiculing me. But it made me feel pathetic. I slapped her, and she hit me back. We fought. I picked up a rock. It was just sitting on the table. A piece of the stupid art she collected. I don’t even know what it was supposed to be. It looked like a shiny rock to me....”

  She paused again. And again, I remained silent.

  “...I didn’t mean to. She was so angry. Something about the money she was owed. I was out of my mind with fear of losing Leonard. I hit her once, on the side of her head, and she fell. Her face hit the table, and she groaned and made a strange gurgling sound in her throat. Then she stopped making any noise. I dropped beside her and told her I was sorry, so sorry...but her eyes didn’t see me. They didn’t see anything. She didn’t have a pulse. I didn’t know what to do.”

  She stopped and stared at her trembling hands.

  “What happened next?” I said gently.

  “I was out of my mind. I thought about calling the police, but I couldn’t let my baby grow up with me in jail. So I dragged her body down into the garage and managed to get it into the trunk of my car. It seemed impossible. I didn’t think I could do it. But you know what they say about the power and strength of a mother protecting her child...” She closed her eyes and in a whisper said, “Maybe that was it.

  “I put a shovel in the trunk with her, and then I drove out of the city. I didn’t know where I was going. I was only thinking about my baby and Leonard. I ended up heading north, into the redwoods, Muir Woods. Finally, I found a spot. It was late and very dark, and there was no one else there. I drove the car off the road into the woods. I found some muddy soil beneath a tree and thick bushes. I dug a hole as deep as I could. It took me a long time. Hours, I think. I buried her. I thought it was a good place because it wasn’t anywhere that hikers or campers were likely to be. I guess I was right because she hasn’t been found yet.”

  I detected a hint of satisfaction in her voice, and it disturbed me even more than her words.

  I waited for her to finish and then asked, “You said Leonard was angry with you about the baby when you told him. What happened?”

  “He saw how upset I was. But he told me he couldn’t be a father. Not then. Not ever. He told me I had to get an abortion.” She paused, gathering herself. “Do you know what that did to me? What I had done for him and for the baby?” She looked at me as if she expected an answer.

  I stared into her eyes and lowered my chin slightly, acknowledging her.

  “But he insisted. Told me he’d leave me and the baby if I kept it. When he said that, something broke inside me. He found me a clinic online and told me to get over there the next day. He said it wasn’t a big deal. In a few days, I’d forget all about it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went to the clinic the next day. I had the abortion.”

  “Maggie, I don’t know what—”

  “But when I killed my baby, our baby, I killed us. The idea of us. The hope of me and Leonard.”

  And with that, another light bulb popped on in my mind. I waited for it to settle and then said, “How did you manage to give him an overdose?”

  It took her a long time to answer. “He didn’t do drugs, other than some pot. But he did drink. I put some Benadryl in his wine, and he passed out. Then I injected him with some of the stuff he sells on the street.”

  And that was it. If there was one victim, other than Frankie, in this whole sordid affair, I’d thought it was Maggie.

  But it turned out that she was the murderer.

  So why was it that I still thought of her as a victim?

  We sat in silence for a long while after she finished speaking. I expected her to ask me to keep her secrets to myself, but she didn’t. I think she was beyond caring about her own life.

  I left her there and didn’t call the police until I got back to my boat.

  I called a detective I knew by the name of Spence and told him what I knew, leaving out much of the related trouble. I didn’t mention Poe or the Blue Notes or Caballo or Wainright or Davis Hunter.

  None of that mattered now.

  The killer was found and the simple, clean story would be told on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner.

  Another tale of lust, betrayal, and murder.

  I sat on my back deck, staring out into the dark night, with a drink in my hand until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  Then I went to bed.

  Fourteen

  On the way to the airport, to take my mind off of my disappointment, I filled her in on the case.

  “So you don’t know where Frankie is now?”

  “No,” I said, my hands fixed tight on the steering wheel. I was driving her Mazda SUV and would park it back at her house and ride my Ducati home.

  “Poor girl. She’s all by herself. Her home isn’t safe and neither is she. And living with those two...losers, loonies, whatever they are. Max, you have to help her.”

  All the women in my life seemed to think so. Easier said than
done. But I agreed with Meiying and Alexandra. I just had to find her first. I hoped that maybe she’d visit Meiying again. I asked Alexandra to call Meiying to see if Frankie had dropped by.

  When we got her on the line, Meiying said no, and Alexandra ended up having to answer queries about what was wrong and why we were asking and if the little girl was in danger. I told Alexandra to tell her that Frankie was safe and had her get off the phone as quickly as she could, which was a bit of a trick with Meiying’s relentless interrogation.

  My luck to fall in with such caring, determined, daunting women.

  Alexandra had carry-on luggage as she was supposed to be gone for only a couple days, looking into a fleeting lead that might dovetail with other clues she’d uncovered in her months-long investigation.

  She insisted that I didn’t need to accompany her to the gate, that we say goodbye outside the terminal. Our embrace was long, the kiss shorter but no less intense, as we were surrounded by passengers and porters.

  As she turned away, she touched my hand and whispered, “I love you.”

  She looked at me for a moment with passion in her glowing eyes.

  I nodded, touched her cheek, kissed her again, mumbling affectionately against her lips.

  Fifteen

  It was just past midnight when I pulled the Ducati into its space behind the Rusty Root. I took the Rubik’s cube out of the saddlebag and shoved it in my jacket pocket.

  It was a damp night, full of wayward stars and a pink sliver of a moon. I walked around the back of the shed and angled to the waterfront passing the parade of boats leading to my own.

  The ocean on my left hummed in my ear, a briny sea tang filled my nose, people’s voices echoed, muted as if they arose from the bottom of a canyon.

  I strolled slowly for a half-mile past the U.S.S. Pampanito and Pier 43 1/2, and then the Blue and Gold fleet, and out to Pier 41. Coit Tower, the dying wish of a rich old lady—a paean to the city’s firefighters—loomed high on Telegraph Hill, drifting in and out of the fog.