by Julie Smith
“Thanks. I think they’re going to charge Parker.”
“Oh foot.” Chris is southern and prone to talk funny now and then. She wrapped spidery hands around her coffee cup and wrinkled up her face. “Well, hell, that’s the least of your worries.” She produced a stack of telephone messages. “Every TV and radio station in town is hot on your trail. Also a Stacy Clayton and a Rob—um—Pigball.”
“Burns. He works for the Chronicle. And Stacy’s one of Elena’s partners. Did she leave a number?”
“No. Said she might drop by sometime today. Are you going to duck the reporters?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can use them.”
She frowned. Chris didn’t care much for my self-serving manipulation of the press, so I decided not to tell her yet about the little idea that stack of messages had given me. Rob Burns wouldn’t like it either.
I changed the subject and told Chris about the money. “Maybe it’s Diddleybop’s,” she said. “At the bordello.”
“Elena? Yeah, I was going to call her first thing this morning.”
Chris pulled the phone over, and I dialed. Elena must not have been a mass media addict, because she didn’t seem to know about my adventure of the night before. “Do I gather from our conversation of the other day,” I began after a few pleasantries, “that Kandi got half the money for her tricks and the rest went into the co-op’s kitty?”
“Right. That’s the way it works for everybody.”
“And where is the money kept?”
“In a safe here at the house, and then in two bank accounts: a savings and a checking.”
“Are you missing any?”
“No. Why?”
“Who has access to it?”
“All the co-op members, in all three places. Why?”
“None of the part-timers? I mean Kandi, specifically. Could she have gotten into the safe?”
“No way. She didn’t even know where it was. But why, for Christ’s sake?”
I figured I might as well tell her. If she were the murderer, she’d guess anyway. “Because Kandi hid $25,000 in my asparagus fem before she got killed. I’m trying to find out where she got it.”
Elena was silent. It would be unkind to call her an acquisitive woman, but I figured if I could see her, she’d probably have dollar signs in her eyes, like old-timey comic book characters. “We never have that much in the safe,” she said at last.
“Did anyone at the party complain of missing any money?”
“No.”
“What about the senator? Think hard; did he say anything that hinted at it?”
“Are you kidding? Who’d bring $25,000 to a whorehouse?”
“Well, somebody must have. Who had access to his clothes besides Kandi?”
“Anybody could have. All the co-op members would have known where his clothes were, and anyone else might have slipped upstairs, found them, and patted them down. That Frank fellow, for instance.”
“No. I had a little talk with him last night, and I don’t think he knew about the money. He’s a cop.”
“Jesus.”
“Read today’s Chronicle—you might get a kick out of it. But back to the senator. Who had access to his clothes after Kandi took them to the basement?”
“Again, anybody might have. Although it isn’t really likely that any of the guests would have wandered down there.”
“Did you tell the senator that Kandi took his clothes to the basement?”
“No, but for Christ’s sake, Rebecca, do you honestly think the senator would be dumb enough to bring $25,000 to a whorehouse?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t see why anyone would.”
I hung up, discouraged. Chris had her chin cupped in her hands. “No luck?”
I shook my head and stared into my coffee cup. I guess I must have done it for quite a while without realizing time was slipping by.
“Say, Rebecca—” said Chris.
Something about her tone made me look up. “Yes?”
“You seem kind of distracted. I mean I know you nearly got killed last night, and your client’s about to be charged with murder, but you are exhibiting aberrant behavior. For you, the normal reaction to all that is to shut yourself up with some music, not come into my office and stare into your coffee cup like a crystal-gazer.”
I sighed. She was right, and I hadn’t realized it myself till then. I was trying to keep something at the edge of my consciousness and not succeeding very well. It was Uncle Walter, the only person I knew who actually had access to $25,000 and had known Kandi.
“Anything you want to tell old Chris?”
Yes, but I couldn’t. That’s how bad I was. I was still trying to think of an answer when the phone rang.
It was Rob Burns. “Hi, kid. How’s your face?”
“Purple, thanks. I’m glad you called.”
“Jaycocks has made bail.”
“So? Do you think he’ll come after me again?”
“Of course not. I just thought you’d want to know. Want to have lunch?”
“Sure.” I was surprised how very much the idea pleased me. “I’ve got some things to tell you.”
“Exclusively?”
“Can’t. But I’ll tell you first.”
“No good. The electronic parasites—also known as the broadcast media—can use it right away.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” I said. And then thought: Whoops, Rebecca, why’d you say that?
“Done. I’ll pick you up at noon.”
Chris was smiling when I hung up. “Whoever that was, you like him. Good. You need a new peach blossom.”
“What about Parker?”
“I don’t like you consorting with the criminal element.”
I threw a pencil at her.
“But seriously, folks,” she said, “how are we going to get him out of jail?”
“I’ll tell you how. I’m going to tell every reporter in town about the money, starting with the peach blossom on the phone.”
Chapter Eighteen
Her fine long nose quivered at the end. Chris didn’t know it, but that was something that happened when she was upset. “What good will that do?” she asked, controlling herself.
“At best, make the cops realize they’ve made a terrible mistake by charging my client. At worst, just embarrass them.”
“It’s childish, Rebecca. And possibly unprofessional.”
“Maybe, but mostly you don’t like it because it goes against your genteel southern grain. You can’t turn me into a lady, you know.”
She let her gentility show. “Fuckin’ A. Do your worst.”
I went back into my own office and sat back down at my big ugly oak desk. It’s an odd thing about that office, by the way; nothing could be more different from my apartment. It’s cozy, lined with law books and hung with photos of my family. Not my style at all, but a warm little world I love.
There was still an hour and a half before Rob would be there, so I started making phone calls. It was true I’d told Rob I’d tell him my news first, but he’d said that was no good, so I figured all bets were off.
I’d done two phone interviews and set up an afternoon taping with a TV station when Stacy arrived. This time she wasn’t the little-girl fantasy she’d been at the FDO party, and she wasn’t the hard-looking child who drank sherry with Elena and me. She was well dressed, nicely made up, and looked at least twenty. She knocked lightly, almost shyly, I thought, on the sill of my open office door.
“Rebecca?”
“Stacy. Chris told me you called.”
“I’ve been calling for two days. What happened to your face?”
Involuntarily, my hand went to my bruised right cheek. I’d forgotten about it. “Sit down,” I said, and she did. “You didn’t happen to call shortly before midnight last night, did you?”
“I did, yes. About eleven forty-five.”
“No kidding! Well, shake, pal—you saved me from a fate worse than death. Pos
sibly from death.” She took my extended hand, puzzled. I told her how the phone call had interrupted a rape in progress and then I told her what had happened to my face and asked what I could do for her.
“I’m sorry I was such a bitch the other day,” she said.
“You were upset.”
“Look, I think your client or lover, or whoever he is, is guilty as hell, but I’ve been thinking about things. I mean, there’s something I ought to tell you. In the interests of justice or something.” Her mouth turned up in a half sneer, but I thought she seemed embarrassed. “I lied when we talked at the bordello.”
“About what?”
“I do know someone who had a motive to kill Kandi. Two people.”
If I’d been a Victorian lady, I’d have called for the smelling salts. If I’d been a Buddhist, I’d have figured my Karma had just done an about-face. But I was a Jewish feminist lawyer, so I just sat there smiling and nodding, with my heart doing ninety in a residential neighborhood.
“I mean I didn’t exactly lie; I sort of forgot at the time,” Stacy continued. “Elena brought it up later at a co-op meeting. In fact, she specifically asked all of us not to tell you.”
She showed me those sharp little teeth of hers, meaning to be friendly I guess, but the woman simply could not smile without looking malicious. She should see a dentist.
I had so many questions it was tough to know which one to go with. I decided on something low-key. “So why are you telling me?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I guess I don’t see prostitution as an honorable profession with a code of ethics and all that crap. It’s a living, sure, but for Christ’s sake, on the off chance your client”—she sneered the word—“is innocent after all, he ought to get a break. Also, I figure I can trust you to use the names wisely.”
“It’s the two guys Kandi was blackmailing, isn’t it?”
“We don’t know for sure she was blackmailing them.”
Oh God, when was she going to come to the point? I couldn’t take it much longer. “I can promise to be discreet,” I said. Was that me talking? That stuffy simp?
“Good. Okay then.”
I waited. I even reached for a pencil and a piece of paper to scribble the names down.
“Martin Goodfellow,” she said. I scribbled. “And Walter Berman.” I kept scribbling, hoping Stacy wouldn’t see that I wasn’t writing down the second name at all, but making crazy little loops and circles to give myself something to do so I could stay in control. Because the worst had happened. My uncle Walter had just become a murder suspect.
Those loops and circles helped, though. I was bearing down so hard I broke my pencil point, but I kept my cool. “Know anything about them?” I asked casually.
She shrugged. “I’ve seen them a dozen times, and they look rich. That’s about all.”
“I appreciate your telling me this, Stacy.”
“I thought I ought to. See you later—I've got a date.”
And she was gone. I turned my chair to the window and looked out to think. I had to admit Elena was right about her; she wasn’t a bad sort underneath that malicious smile and defensive exterior.
“Who was that?” Chris was standing in my doorway, looking like a fashion model in a black silk blouse and slender camel skirt. Even in the state I was in, I wished I had her figure.
“Stacy. Sit down.”
“Uh oh. You sound like we is in a heap o’shit.”
“I’m glad you said ‘we.’ But it’s me, really. Listen, let me pose a hypothetical ethical problem. Suppose a lawyer’s gentleman friend is accused of murder and he hires her to save his pretty ass. So the lawyer tries to find out who else might have had a motive for killing the victim and, because a prostitute with a sense of civic duty shoots off her mouth, the lawyer discovers the victim was blackmailing two men.”
“Go on.”
“And one of the men is the lawyer’s favorite uncle.” I spoke fast so I could get the words out before they got stuck somewhere on the way.
Chris’s nose quivered. She sprawled back in her chair. “Oh, my poor peach blossom.”
“Keep it hypothetical. We Schwartzes don’t like to tell family secrets.”
Chris sat up, all business, like I knew she would. She could deal with a hypothesis a lot better than she could deal with a friend in trouble. With her friends, her natural inclination was to soothe any way she could, even if it meant saying what they wanted to hear when it wasn’t necessarily the truth.
“The lawyer would have to decide whether she has a diddleybop.”
“Conflict, yes.”
She rubbed the side of her long nose with an equally long finger. If she were a man and the tales were true, she would probably have a long penis. “At this point, I think whether she had a conflict would depend on her emotional state.”
“How do you mean?”
“If she felt she had to protect her uncle at her client’s expense, well, yes, she should withdraw from the case. But investigating a murder is not normally a lawyer’s job, and unless she had evidence that the uncle was actually the murderer, and not merely a person with a motive, she wouldn’t be obligated to tell the police. In fact, her professional status would only be affected if that were the case—I mean if she had hard evidence—or if she felt she couldn’t adequately represent her client.”
She was right. I could see it instantly. I nodded.
“Just for the sake of interest,” she asked “what is the hypothetical lawyer’s state of mind?”
“Screw the hypothesis. I’m all right. I can do it. You know what? I love being a lawyer.”
“Oh, stop dribbling all over yourself.”
“I do, really. I love the way things fit together so tidily and there’s a reason for everything, except you always have to weigh everything, and it’s like a constant tug-of-war.” “Some say it has nothing to do with justice.”
“Well, certain specific legal questions don’t, of course; I mean, certain things aren’t right, but they are the law, and I even like that part of it.”
“So much that you’re willing to give up smoking marijuana?”
“Of course not. You have to work to change bad laws, but the code we do have is so manageable and organized and—safe.”
“Cozy as a flea on a cat in a feather bed,” said Chris. “Want to have lunch?”
“Can’t. Got a date, as Stacy would say.”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Pigball of the Chronicle. Give him all the news that fits.”
He wasn’t the only one I had news for, so I got on the phone again and continued my campaign of ruthless media manipulation.
Rob was a fashionable twenty minutes late. He wore the corduroy jacket reporters seem to consider a uniform, had a bunch of daisies in one hand, and had the other arm in a sling.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, extending the daisies. “I wish they were roses. No, diamonds.”
“Purple’s one of my best colors,” I said. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Voila!” He slipped the arm out of the sling, wiggled the hand to show me it worked, and used it to take my hand and bring it to his lips.
“Hey, cut it out.” I was annoyed at being fooled. “What’s the point of the sling?”
“It’s for you, my dear. Misery loves company.”
Well, sure I laughed. Who could help it? Then I put the daisies in a vase.
“Listen, this thing you have to tell me,” he said. “It’s top-secret stuff, right?”
“I’ve already told half your brethren in the broadcast media.”
“I mean we shouldn’t be overheard talking about it.”
“I suppose not,” I said, not sure what he was getting at.
“Good, then we can’t go to a restaurant. Come with me.”
I did—first to get a bottle of wine, a loaf of sourdough French bread, and two kinds of paté from Marcel and Henri on Union Street, and then to Fort Point for a picnic. Now Fort Point is not a pic
nic area, but simply a lovely spot almost directly under the Golden Gate Bridge where teenagers go to park and tourists go to look at the view. But we went there to picnic. Rob’s first plan was to spread things out on the hood of his car and climb up on it, but it was too windy for that. We ate in the car.
It was a gorgeous day for it. Windy, but clear and crisp, so that persons of the leisure class were out on the bay providing a show in their sailboats, and persons of other boating classes were going about their appointed rounds as well. The bridge was right above us, just to the left, and the hills of Marin were right in front of us, making a spectacular background for the folks in the water show. Blame it on the wine, but I got about as relaxed and content as a lawyer with a purple face, a client in jail, and an uncle in trouble can get.
I told Rob about the money, flinching a little when I got to the part about leaving it home to go to my parents’ party, but he had the decency to say he’d have probably done the same thing himself.
“Do you think she was killed for the money?” he asked when I was done.
“Yes. Do you?”
“I don’t see any other way to interpret it. The question is, where’d she get it and who knew she had it? Oh yeah, and who knew she was going to be at your house?”
“Well, Elena sent her there, so she knew. And Stacy Clayton, who’s one of Elena’s partners, rode partway over with Kandi, so she knew. But anyone could have followed her from the bordello. The police think Parker did.” Mentioning Stacy made me remember something. “Say, Rob,” I said on impulse, “you haven’t heard of a Martin Goodfellow, have you?”
“Sure. He’s a banker—friend of my publisher’s. Don’t tell me he’s mixed up in this.”
“Stacy says Kandi may have been blackmailing him.”
“Oho! That explains why the Chronicle's so interested in this story. Didn’t you wonder how I happened to be in front of your house after Jaycocks beat you up?”
“I assumed you heard me on the police radio.”
“My dear, I have better things to do at midnight than listen to the scanner. No, the night police reporter heard the broadcast, and it was thought so important that the city editor called me at home and sent me over. The whole staff knows the publisher is hot after this story. But why was Kandi supposed to be blackmailing Goodfellow?”