Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!)

by Michaela Thompson

  “What?” I said.

  He waved his glass, indicating the room, its inhabitants, and part of the ceiling. “Bunch of turkeys, man. Real bunch of turkeys.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was insulting the crowd or announcing the menu. “Who is?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Who is what?”

  “A bunch of turkeys.”

  He looked at me glumly and turned away to his drink. “Aw, Christ, it’s hopeless.”

  I wasn’t to be put off. “Don’t say it’s hopeless. Just tell me.”

  “Can’t you even see?” he said with exasperation. “Whole goddamn room is full of goddamn City Hall turkeys.”

  I sipped my drink. He pointed his index finger at me. The nail was chewed to the quick. “You look like an intelligent lady. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m married to one of the turkeys.”

  He looked sincerely sad. “Jeez,” he said in a tone of regret. “Which one?”

  “Richard Longstreet.”

  “Oh, no.” His voice was a plaintive moan. “Not Redevelopment. God, I don’t believe it.”

  At the time, I didn’t appreciate his sympathy. “Yeah. Redevelopment.”

  He leaned toward me, full of sincerity. “Lady, if you want to take my advice you’ll stay away from that Redevelopment bunch. I mean, I’m not kidding with you on that one. They’re bad news.” He nodded firmly.

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “It only comes about twenty years too late.” I took my drink and wavered away from the bar.

  Larry had said Redevelopment people were bad news, and he had been right. Now Larry had smashed himself on an alley pavement. That brash little man a suicide? Week after week, he had gone after City Hall corruption, building-code violations, consumer fraud, police department drinking, always with a strident assurance that left no room for self-doubt. Wasn’t self-doubt a requirement for suicide?

  You didn’t know Larry, and you don’t know the first thing about it, I chided myself. Wearily, I went to the kitchen to make a cheese sandwich. The bread was slightly stale. As I spread it with mayonnaise, I argued internally. I had heard Richard promise someone that soon Larry wouldn’t bother them again. Richard didn’t know that I had heard him, and I was the only one who had heard him, besides the person at the other end of the line. That was point one.

  Slicing the cheese, I went on to point two. If Larry was bothering Richard, it was probably because Richard was doing something Larry planned to expose. I wanted to know what. Had the urbane, unflappable Richard Longstreet made a misstep? Imagining his doing something wrong was easy. I had known for a long time that he was ruthless where his career was concerned. As a poor boy with the manners and tastes of the rich, he had of necessity hardened himself, left some of the virtues behind as excess baggage. Imagining his getting caught doing a wrong act was much more difficult. Richard was clever, and he liked to look good.

  I had forgotten to make tea. The kettle would boil in a minute. The truth is, you want revenge, I told myself. There. There it was. I was angry, hurt, bitter, and now I had something that had never before been given to me— a weapon. Furthermore, if Richard had done something, something that led to Larry’s death, wouldn’t it be only the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, to find out what it was? To bring about justice? Justice for Larry and justice for me, all in one stroke?

  My head was beginning to ache. Bring about justice. Maybe I thought I was Saint George, riding to kill the dragon and rescue the maiden in distress. Whereas actually I was the maiden— make that matron— in distress. In other words, helpless. I ate my sandwich and drank my tea and continued to sit staring at the squeezed-out tea bag in my saucer.

  Larry might have been working on a story about Richard and the Redevelopment Agency at the time of his death. If he had been, it would mean— it wouldn’t mean anything. But it might mean Richard had done something to Larry. It might. It might mean Richard was as mean a son of a bitch as I thought he was. I’d feel a lot of satisfaction in having my opinion confirmed.

  Satisfaction was something I hadn’t had much of lately, and the thought of feeling it again made my head reel faster than any pill ever could. All I really needed to know was what stories Larry had been working on before he went out the window. Suppose I could find out?

  I couldn’t find out. No way. I wasn’t Saint George. I was just an ex-political wife, or a political ex-wife. Confined, more or less, to my really rather lovely home.

  Well, hell. I could go to the People’s Times and ask.

  I could ask. What harm would it do? They could always tell me to get lost if they didn’t want to say. If having somebody tell me to get lost would kill me, I’d have died after Richard said it.

  I must be nuts. Time for a pill.

  I could ask. It wouldn’t hurt anything. If I failed, so what? Failure was the story of my life. If I found out Larry had been investigating Richard— well, then I’d know.

  Time for a pill.

  I cleared away the dishes and sat down for an evening of television.

  Three

  The People’s Times was located in a grimy, dark-red-brick converted warehouse in the shadow of the freeway. Cleveland Street, in the industrial district south of Market Street, was hardly a street at all, but a litter-strewn passage where cars parked with two wheels on the crumbling sidewalks. Although the geographical distance wasn’t great, the atmosphere was completely different from the never-never land north of Market, where legions of visitors regularly left their hearts and discretionary dollars at the garish attractions of Fisherman’s Wharf or Chinatown. Surely nobody wearing white shoes— footgear religiously shunned by true San Franciscans, thus the dead giveaway of a tourist— had ever walked down Cleveland Street.

  Was I going to walk down Cleveland Street? My salmon-colored peignoir was hanging on a hook on the bathroom door. I was wearing a blue pantsuit, and my hair was brushed. I had managed to get the car started, drive all the way down here, and park in a vacant lot next to a dented yellow Volkswagen with a BOYCOTT GALLO sticker on the rear bumper. Now I was staring across at the building I had planned to enter, all the while clinging to the steering wheel as if it were a life ring somebody had thrown me just before I went down for the third time. On the next street over, trucks roared by on their way to the freeway, adding their fumes to the haze that hung over the morning.

  Making the effort to get this far was something already. I could go back home now and feel that I had accomplished the seemingly insurmountable task of getting out of the house. That I should also get out of the car was too much to expect for one day.

  To my surprise, I did get out of the car. Standing among broken glass, twisted cigarette packages, and weeds, I continued to stare at the building. The windows were blank and dusty, the dreariness of the facade relieved occasionally by a lopsided fern or an Indian-print bedspread hanging in a window. From somewhere not far away a jackhammer duplicated the pulses I felt in my head.

  I was going in. If I weren’t going in, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to get dressed, make up a cover story, and unearth the two-year-old notebook— half full of calculus problems from my daughter Candace’s high school days— that I was nervously clutching. I crossed the street.

  At close range, the building was even seedier. The outer door listed on its hinges, opening into a foyer that smelled faintly of urine. On a yellowing piece of paper taped to the wall beside the elevator was a heavily amended list of tenants. Coalition for Justice and Equality, Gay Citizens League, Abolish Shock Therapy Now, People’s Times. Seventh floor. I wasn’t sure I liked the looks of the elevator, but when I entered and pressed the button the door creaked closed and it rumbled obediently, if slowly, upward.

  When the door creaked open again, I stepped out into a musty-smelling hallway illuminated by milky light from a pebbled-glass window at the end. A few yards down on my left, a door stood open and a phone was ringing. Next to the door, someone had written People’s Tim
es on the wall in red magic marker. I could still go back. The elevator hadn’t even left yet. But at that moment it began to reverberate, and I stepped into the reception office of the People’s Times.

  My first impression was of paper. All sorts of paper. Tied, piled-up bundles of copies of the Times along one wall. On the battered wooden desk in front of me stacks, or drifts, of magazines and opened mail, some of which had found a less crowded resting place on the floor. A threadbare green couch was littered with the daily newspapers, and pigeonholes on the wall behind the desk were overflowing with envelopes and flyers. The room was empty, and the phone was still ringing.

  As I stood uncertainly, a girl with a large halo of frizzy red hair burst into the room, screamed “Screw that phone!” grabbed the receiver, surveyed me, and said, crisply, “Times.”

  She held up a finger to indicate she’d be through in a minute. Her exuberant hair, big blue eyes, and freckles cried out for an oversized polka-dot bow tie and a bright yellow derby, but instead she wore the top to a set of long underwear, bib overalls, and hiking boots. “Yeah, we plan to keep publishing. Andrew Baffrey’s taking over as editor,” she said, sitting down at the desk and resting one leg on the piles of mail, knocking a few more pieces to the ground.

  As she listened, she picked up a letter, squinted at it, tossed it aside. Then she rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “No, I think Andrew will do a great job, and I expect he’ll still want to use the story you sent us, but we’re in a little bit of a mess right now. Could you maybe call back next week? Thanks a lot.”

  Putting down the phone, she looked at me and said, “Writers are incredible. What can I do for you?”

  Sweat from my palms had made my notebook feel slippery. “I’m Maggie Wilson,” I said. It was my maiden name. I’d decided to leave “Longstreet” out of it.

  The girl offered a hand that was even more freckled than her face. “Betsy O’Shea.”

  Larry Hawkins’s death didn’t seem to have fazed Betsy O’Shea, but apparently she was a type it would take a lot to faze. Of all the attitudes I had imagined I might find at the People’s Times, this brisk friendliness was probably the last I had expected. Encouraged, I launched into my cover story. “I’m a journalism student at State. I’m in the reentry program there, you know, training older women for the job market…”

  Betsy looked interested. “My landlady went through that about a year ago. She said it was great.” She shrugged. “We don’t have any jobs now, though. See, you may not have heard, but our editor—”

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted. “I’m not here about a job. It’s for a class assignment. I want to do a story on Larry Hawkins.”

  The blue eyes glazed. “You and a dozen other people.”

  Oh God. I was losing her good will already. I stumbled on, “I guess it isn’t a very original idea, but I thought I might be able to give it a new slant.”

  “How many times have I heard that one? No offense.” She rubbed her temples. “Reentry program, huh? Did your old man run out on you? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  My face burned. What a fool I was, coming here to expose myself to this strange girl’s casual curiosity instead of staying up on Lake Street where I belonged. “I guess that’s right.”

  I caught a shade of pity on her face. “That’s what happened to my landlady.” She waved a hand at the couch. “Sit down for a minute, why don’t you?”

  As I crossed to the couch, the phone rang again and she yelled, “Kit, catch the phones for a while, OK?” I moved some newspapers and sat down.

  “What kind of story did you have in mind?” she asked.

  My plan was to start slowly and back into the big question. “I’d like to do an account of his last day, interspersed with history about the Times, stories he covered, things like that. Sort of a montage.” Actually, I thought, the idea wasn’t half bad.

  “His last day, huh?” Betsy leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “That would be two days ago. It was a fairly typical day around here.”

  “It was?” I opened my notebook.

  “Yeah. Which means it was frantic from beginning to end. Let’s see. Larry came in around noon and was his normal self, ranting at everybody. That afternoon was the thing with September Apple.”

  “September Apple?”

  “September Apple is a person. She was really into ecology at one point, so she took that name. Her real name is something like Mary.”

  “She came in that afternoon?”

  “She was always coming in. Larry gave her an assignment. Like everybody else in this town, she wants to be a writer. He finally told her to do something about poetry. Andrew Baffrey had been pushing him to use artsy stuff occasionally. So she worked and worked, and she was around here a lot. This place is the biggest outpatient clinic in San Francisco.” Betsy glanced around as if she wouldn’t be surprised to see outpatients emerging from the walls.

  “Did the story get published?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s what all the shrieking was about. She came in that afternoon, the day after she’d turned it in, and God, what a fight she and Larry had. I mean, the door of his office was closed, but I could hear their voices all the way out here. Finally, she came flying out of there just about hysterical and took off and I haven’t seen her since. You have to understand that wasn’t particularly unusual, though. Larry had that effect on writers.”

  I was scratching away in the notebook, getting it all down. I didn’t want to blow my cover by not looking interested. “They were fighting about the story?”

  “Probably. See”— Betsy leaned forward— “don’t put this in your article, but constructive criticism wasn’t in Larry’s vocabulary. You either wrote it his way or screw you. He was always sure he was one hundred percent right.”

  “Did anything happen after that?”

  “Not much. Larry spent a long time in his office with Andrew Baffrey, the managing editor, that afternoon. They must have been in there three hours, and then Andrew left, and man.” Betsy was silent for a moment, thoughtful. “I tell you, Larry came out to get a cup of coffee, and he was shaking like a leaf. It was strange, you know?” The sadness I had missed earlier washed over her face. Her fingers twisted a frizzy tendril of hair.

  “He wasn’t usually the nervous type?” Pretty soon, the intrepid reentry reporter was going to slip in the jackpot question.

  Betsy chuckled mournfully. “How could he run a paper like the Times and be nervous, with people threatening to sue him all the time? I feel bad about it now. I saw he was upset. Maybe if I’d said something, it would’ve made a difference, and he wouldn’t…” She sighed. “So. He went back into his office, closed the door, and nobody saw him until his body was found by the garbage men. Is that all you need?”

  The moment had come. “Just one more thing. I was wondering—” I began, just as a flabby blond man appeared in the doorway.

  I heard Betsy mutter “Oh, no” as he walked unsteadily toward her. His hair, a razor cut grown too long, looked greasy. His belly hung over the pants of his ghastly brushed denim leisure suit. He rested his knuckles on the desk and leaned toward her.

  “Well.” He managed to convey hostility in the single syllable.

  “Hi, Ken,” said Betsy calmly.

  “So Hawkins has gone to his reward.” The man had a resonant, theatrical voice. I almost thought I had heard it before. His face, with its straight, fleshy nose and prominent chin, looked familiar too. Was he an actor? I flashed through the productions I’d seen by the local repertory company, but couldn’t fit him into any role.

  “That’s right.”

  “Who’s in charge now?” His belligerence was deepening.

  “Andrew Baffrey.”

  “He in?”

  Betsy shook her head. “Sorry. He’s gone out for a while.”

  The man leaned heavily across the desk and gripped Betsy’s shoulder. Her expression didn’t change. “You sure he’s not around?”

  �
�Absolutely.” Betsy slid away from his grasp.

  The man staggered, righted himself, and gazed blearily around. He wandered toward me and sank down on the other end of the couch. I could smell the liquor now. His eyes slid over me without interest, and I was again positive I knew him. “Baffrey, huh?” he said.

  “Right. But he isn’t in.”

  “Is he as big a son of a bitch as Hawkins? Or is he a human being?”

  “Andrew’s OK.”

  He leaned forward in a parody of earnestness. “Look, hon. Now that Larry’s gone, don’t you think this rag could print a retraction? I mean, enough’s enough.”

  Betsy shook her head. “You won’t get anywhere with that, Ken. The story was true and we could prove it. Like Larry told you, the subject is closed.”

  “The subject is closed,” he mimicked. “Shit. Larry Hawkins thinks it’s all right to take away a man’s job for the sake of a story? What kind of screwed-up values are those?”

  Now I knew who he was. Kenneth MacDonald, Channel Eight’s local news attempt to duplicate Eric Sevareid. He had been the picture of rock-solid propriety, narrating three-alarm fires, murders in the Tenderloin, drug busts in Berkeley, the new gorilla at the zoo, and the mayor’s birthday party all with the same sonorous pomposity. He’d had an editorial segment— “The View from Here,” or something like that— in which he’d strung together platitudes on subjects of local interest.

  I stared at him. He’d been ruggedly handsome, with features worthy of Mount Rushmore. Now, his face was puffy, bloated, his eyes insignificant in the surrounding flesh. I remembered that I hadn’t seen him on Channel Eight lately.

  “I’ll tell you again,” Ken was saying. “I told Larry, and I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell this Andrew character that I didn’t know who owned that place. It was just a two-bedroom cabin at Tahoe, not a palace, for Chrissakes.”