Perdido. Lost.
Like Janet Mitchell: low-down blue and lost.
Why?
The question throbbed in him to the beat of the music. She’d left no note, Mrs. Fong had told him. Given no warning. And the police had found nothing among her meager effects to hint at a motive. What about her past? he’d asked. Who was she, where did she come from? Mrs. Fong had no idea. Showed up one day five months ago, rented the apartment on a month-to-month basis. Paid two months’ rent in advance, plus a cleaning deposit, all in cash; paid each subsequent month’s rent in cash. Where did she work? Mrs. Fong shrugged. Self-employed, private income—that was what Janet Mitchell had told her and she hadn’t bothered to ask for references. No need for references, not when you were handed several hundred dollars in good green cash in advance and then promptly on the first of every month. Visitors? No visitors, before or after her death. Just him, today. The police hadn’t come back, which meant they’d been satisfied that her death was in fact suicide. They wouldn’t care otherwise; she was another statistic to them. Mrs. Fong didn’t care; to her Janet Mitchell was nothing more than an annoying mess to clean up. Had anybody cared that she’d ended her life? A relative—had the authorities found one to claim the body? Mrs. Fong didn’t know about that, either. Mrs. Fong was tired of answering questions. Mrs. Fong politely but firmly shut the door in his face.
He felt dull and empty, sitting here now in the dark—almost the same way he’d felt when first his father and then his mother died. But they’d been his parents; he’d loved them, even if he hadn’t been close to them. It made no sense that he should feel some sense of loss over a woman he had spoken to once in his life, who hadn’t even known he existed.
Or did it?
The blues, he thought. One blue lonesome individual empathizing with the plight of another. But it was more than that. In jazz there were two forms of the blues: a simple, direct, personal sadness, the sadness of remembrances past and of the deep darkness of the unconscious; and the other kind, a deterioration and decline of the personal spirit, a kind of resolution downward to plaintive, desperate resignation. Ms. Lonesome had had the second type. Perdido. Lost. He wondered if maybe he did, too. If this entire business with her was symptomatic of an approaching downward spiral in his own existence. More than just a midlife crisis; a rest-of-his-life crisis, in which he descended gradually into a void of utter passivity.
The possibility worried him, yet he wasn’t frightened by it. Perhaps that too was symptomatic. If you think you might be on the edge of a breakdown, you ought to be terrified of the prospect—and if you’re not terrified, then isn’t that in itself a sign of something clinically wrong? Utter passivity: a synonym for despair. Like the kind of despair Ms. Lonesome had been suffering from?
No. The difference was, he wasn’t suicidal. Sit in bathtub, cut her wrists with a razor blade. He simply wasn’t made that way. He could never commit an act of self-destruction.
Maybe she hadn’t believed she could, either. Once.
Why did she do it?
What drove her into the depths?
The Duke’s arrangement of “Blue Serge” was playing now, a piece even more reflective of plaintive resignation than “Perdido.” Messenger listened, let himself be folded into the music for a minute or so—and then popped out again, back into bleak awareness. He sipped some of the brandy. It tasted bitter: bitter heat. He set the snifter down. Outside, a motorcycle raced past with its engine cranked up, momentarily drowning out Ellington’s band. A sudden siren sliced the night, close by; white and then blood-red lights flashed across the curtains and were gone. The room, he realized, was chilly. He ought to get up and put on the furnace. But he didn’t do it. He did nothing except sit, thinking and trying not to think.
After a while, when the record ended and quiet pressed down, he said aloud, “She shouldn’t have been alone. Nobody should have to die that much alone.”
He sat there.
“Lost, wasted life.”
He sat there.
“Ms. Lonesome,” he said to the darkness, “why did you use that goddamn razor blade?”
IT WAS WARM in the coroner’s office on Bryant Street. Too warm: Messenger could feel the sweat moving on his face and neck. Another of life’s little illusions shattered. He’d always thought places like this would be dank and cold from top to bottom. And a bare, antiseptic white, presided over by sepulchral types in starched uniforms. Maybe it was that way down in the basement, where the morgue and autopsy room were, but up here was a straightforward business office paneled in wood; and the male clerk who waited on him was young and brisk and nattily dressed in a dark blue blazer and gray slacks.
“Janet Mitchell,” the clerk said, and tapped out the name on his computer keyboard. He studied the file that came up on the screen. “Oh, right. The Jane Doe suicide last week.”
“Jane Doe? Does that mean her name isn’t Janet Mitchell?”
“Evidently not.”
“Then her body hasn’t been claimed yet.”
“Not yet. It’s still here, in storage.”
“Storage,” Messenger said.
“In cases like this cadavers are frozen immediately after autopsy. Do you think you might be able to identify the deceased? If so, I can arrange a viewing. …”
“There’s no point in it. I knew her as Janet Mitchell.”
“I see.”
“How long will you keep her body here unclaimed?”
“Thirty to sixty days, depending on space available.”
“And then?”
“We’ll make arrangements with the Public Administrator’s Office for cremation or burial. But in this case, at least, the city won’t have to assume the cost.”
“Why is that?”
“She left more than enough money to pay for it.”
“How much money?”
“I’m afraid I can’t give you that information.”
“Can you at least tell me what’s being done to find out her real identity?”
“No, you’ll have to discuss that with the officer in charge of her case.”
“If you’ll give me his name …”
“Inspector Del Carlo,” the clerk said. “Second floor, main building.”
INSPECTOR GEORGE DEL Carlo was sixtyish, heavyset, with black-olive eyes that seldom blinked. He was neither friendly nor unfriendly, but still he made Messenger feel uncomfortable, as if he thought his visitor was behaving in a way that was socially if not criminally suspect.
“You say you hardly knew the woman, Mr. Messenger. Then why are you so interested in who she was and why she took her own life?”
“I keep asking myself the same question. I suppose it’s because she was a … solitary person and so am I. I looked at her and I saw myself.”
“Did you have a relationship with her?”
“Relationship?”
“Date her. Sleep with her.”
“No. I told you, I hardly knew her.”
“But you did talk to each other.”
“Only once, for about a minute.”
“Did she tell you anything at all about herself?”
“No. Nothing.”
“You try to find out on your own?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know anybody else who knew her.”
“No.”
“Where she came from, why she was in San Francisco.”
“No.”
“What led her to commit suicide.”
“She was lonely,” Messenger said.
One of Del Carlo’s eyebrows rose. “There’re a lot of lonely people in this city, Mr. Messenger. It’s not much motivation for suicide.”
“It is if you’re cut off from the rest of society, if you exist in a kind of vacuum of despair.”
“Vacuum of despair. Nice phrase. And that’s the way this woman lived?”
“I think so, yes.”
“By choice, or did something drive her to it?”
“
I don’t know. But I can’t imagine anyone living that way by simple choice.”
“Running from something or somebody?”
“Either that, or running from herself.”
Del Carlo said, “Uh-huh,” and leaned back in his chair. “Well, there’s not much I can tell you, Mr. Messenger. She didn’t leave a note and there was nothing among her effects to tell us why she did the Dutch. We did find a photograph in the bathtub with her body; must’ve been looking at it before or after she slit her wrists. Too badly water- and blood-damaged to be identifiable, but our lab people say it was of a child.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Couldn’t be sure. Sex or age.”
“What about her effects? What happened to them?”
“Building manager still has them, with instructions to keep everything until further notice. No place left in the property room here for a Jane Doe suicide’s stuff. But like I said, there’s nothing there to help us. No driver’s license, no Social Security card, no credit cards—no ID of any kind.”
“Fingerprints?”
“We filed them with the Department of Justice’s CID computer, along with X rays and as much other physical data as her body could give us. No record of her anywhere. No match with any missing persons report. We also ran the name Janet Mitchell through various local agencies; that got us another zero. Doesn’t seem to be much doubt that it was an assumed name.”
“What about money? Didn’t she have a bank account?”
“No,” Del Carlo said. “What she did have was a safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo branch on Taraval. Stuffed full of cash—better than fourteen thousand in hundred-dollar bills.”
“My God, that much?”
“That much. Bank keeps those little slips they make box holders sign when they come in. She dipped into her box once a week, on Friday afternoons, regular as clockwork.”
“Which means she paid all her expenses in cash.”
“Looks that way.”
“You need to provide a Social Security number to rent a safe deposit box,” Messenger said. “I suppose she put a phony one on her application.”
“Right. And nobody at the bank bothered to check it. Ditto all the other information she supplied.”
“She sounds like a criminal of some kind. But I can’t believe she was. Not her.”
“Well, you could be right,” Del Carlo said. “People adopt aliases for a lot of reasons, legal as well as illegal. Same goes for hiding out, squirreling away a large amount of cash and living off of it.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any question that her death really was a suicide.”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. Wasn’t a shred of evidence to suggest foul play.”
“Then it’s a closed case.”
“Except as far as the money is concerned. That went into an escrow account in case a relative shows up and puts in a claim. Minus whatever it costs to bury or cremate her remains.”
Messenger said, “And if nobody claims the balance after seven years, it goes to the state.”
“How did you—Oh, right, you’re a CPA.”
“If it really was her money, it should go to her family.”
“Sure, assuming she had a family. But the way it looks now, we’ll never know.”
“I guess you’re right. The way it looks now we never will.”
3
HE WAS AN hour late getting back to work. Not that it mattered; no one said anything to him about it. After fourteen years with Sitwell & Cobb, he had a certain amount of leeway where his time was concerned. It didn’t make any difference to Harvey Sitwell where the work got done, office or home, or how much time it took to do it as long as an employee kept his billable hours up. In that respect, and in terms of base loyalty to his people, Sitwell was a good man to work for. The problem was that he was tightfisted and inflexible in his opinions. Prying an annual raise out of him was always a chore; and once he’d made up his mind where you fitted in the office pecking order, that was where you stayed. It had taken Messenger five struggling years to find out that his slot was somewhere in the middle, and that no matter how hard he worked, no matter what he did, he’d still be in that same slot in ten, twenty, thirty years.
More than once, early on, he’d thought about leaving the firm and hooking up with another that offered a better chance for advancement. But he’d never quite gotten around to doing it, and now he no longer even considered the idea. Apathy, sure, but it was apathy motivated by complacency. The job here was secure; he got along well with Sitwell and with his fellow wage slaves; his salary was more than adequate for his modest needs; and his annual vacation time was three weeks, plus odd days here and there whenever he finished an account ahead of schedule. It was only once in a great while—like today—that he chafed at the job, that his little slot seemed too tight, too confining, and he yearned for something more. Or at least for something different.
He found that he was having trouble concentrating. His mind kept shifting gears, replaying his conversations with the coroner’s clerk and Inspector Del Carlo. The fourteen thousand dollars bothered him the most. Whether it was legally Ms. Lonesome’s or not, and where she’d gotten it. If there was somebody somewhere who was entitled to it, who needed it far more than the state of California, and soon.
At four-fifteen he quit trying to work and packed the Sanderson tax account into his briefcase. He’d get his head into the figures at home later, with the aid of Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie.
“Leaving early, Jimmy?”
He looked up. Phil Engstrom. Fellow wage slave; slot or two higher than his but also not going anywhere. Thin, bald, and determinedly optimistic. His best friend in the office.
“Might as well,” he said. “I can’t seem to concentrate this afternoon.”
“Anything wrong?”
“No. Just one of those days.”
“You need a vacation, son. Still have two weeks, right?”
“Right. End of October.”
“Made up your mind yet where you’re going?”
“Not yet, no. Hawaii, maybe—if I can afford it.”
“Good choice. Plenty of eligible women in the islands. And I don’t just mean one-night stands.”
“Sure.”
“Speaking of which,” Phil said, “what’re you doing tomorrow night?”
“Friday?”
“Friday. Start of the weekend. Any plans?”
“No, no plans. Why?”
“How’d you like to go to a party with Jeanne and me?”
“Oh, hell, Phil …”
“Now don’t say no until you’ve heard the particulars. Jeanne’s brother, Tom, is an artist, remember? Well, he just sold one of his paintings through the Fenner Gallery for eight thousand bucks—his first big sale. So he’s throwing a party to celebrate. His studio in North Beach. The place is a cavern—it’ll hold more than a hundred. That’s how many he’s invited, more than a hundred.”
“He didn’t invite me,” Messenger said. “I don’t know him.”
“No problem. You’ll be Jeanne’s and my guest. It’s a good chance to meet people, Jimmy. Artists, writers. And there’s sure to be more than one unattached female.”
Phil was always trying to socialize him, fix him up with dates and opportunities to meet single women. He’d given in a few times, without enthusiasm and without much success. Had a brief fling with a divorced social worker in her twenties, but it had died of inertia: all they ever talked about were her clients. (“I had this one Latino couple, my God, what a pair they were! He got himself arrested one day for exposing himself to three teenage girls from Mercy High School. And you know what her reaction was? ‘Nobody’s supposed to see that thing but me.’ That’s what she said, I swear to God. She wasn’t outraged that he’d committed a perversion, she was outraged he’d whip it out in front of anybody but her. …”)
“I’m not much for parties, Phil,” he said, “you know that. Crowds make me uncomfortable.”
&nb
sp; “Sure, I know. But you don’t have to stay if you’re not having a good time. Just come for an hour, have a couple of drinks, check out the action.”
“Well … maybe. See how I feel tomorrow after work.”
“No kidding, I think it’ll be worth your while.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sure, you’re probably right.”
TWO SIPS OF the bourbon and water he made for himself convinced him that he didn’t want a drink after all. He put on a Stan Kenton CD and tried to work. That was no good either. Still couldn’t concentrate. And the apartment felt stuffy, almost oppressive.
At six-thirty he put on his topcoat and walked over to the Harmony Café. Crowded, as usual. Familiar faces—and total anonymity. When he scanned the menu, his gaze held on the “Lite Meals” listing for hamburger patty, cottage cheese, fruit cup. He ordered the meat loaf special. But when it came he found he had no appetite. He picked at the food, finally pushed the plate away. He paid the cashier and went back into the cold wind from the ocean.
MRS. FONG WAS not pleased to see him again. She frowned over a pair of reading glasses, holding the foyer door open a scant few inches. “What you want now? More questions?”
“Not exactly, no. I came about Janet Mitchell’s belongings.”
“Belongings?”
“Clothes, personal effects. Inspector Del Carlo told me you have it all here.”
“Boxes in the basement. Not much.”
“Yes, that’s what he said.”
“No jewelry, no valuables. Cheap clothes.”
“Would you mind if I look through them?”
“What for?”
“I’d like to know more about her.”
“Nothing there to tell you. Police already looked.”
“I know. But I just … would you mind?”
“Better not,” Mrs. Fong said.
“I won’t take anything, I just want to look. You can stand by and watch—”
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