Hobbs laughed. “I don’t doubt Uncle Teddy really did,” he said.
I looked at a picture of a young, thin, smiling Ted Kennedy, his hair brown with gray at the temples. I barely recognized Mary. She was not the pale, thin and elderly looking woman of today; she was forty-something, with supple curves and a remarkably pretty face. I had a moment of déjà vu. I had seen this Mary somewhere before. But where? At the time this picture was taken I would have been only fourteen and living in Portland. The déjà vu moment passed and I dismissed it as a fluke.
“Mary, you used to be hot,” I said.
“I was a beauty contestant, as a matter of fact.”
“I didn’t know they had beauty pageants back during the American Civil War,” said Hobbs.
“I’ll bet the best day you ever lived, you were too ugly to fuck with the lights on,” Mary retorted.
Just then the men’s room door opened and a waft of marijuana smoke spilled out, followed by Bernstein, an obese regular who was a thirty-five-year-old perennial grad student.
“Hey, asshole!” Mary screamed. She grabbed Bernstein by the ear and dragged him to the swinging doors. She was hopping on one foot and kicking him in the buttocks with the other. In the shadowy bar they looked like Laurel & Hardy, and the crowd erupted into cheers. Even Hobbs and I laughed when Mary shouted, “You know I don’t allow dope in here, you dumb shit. What’s wrong with you? I thought Jews were supposed to be smart.”
“How would you like to have grown up with that nasty old thing as your mother?” asked Hobbs after the excitement had ended.
“My mother died when I was four,” I said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a mother.”
Staring into his drink, Hobbs said, “Trust me on this one, Holiday: the tragedy of not having a mother is sometimes no tragedy at all.” He continued to stare into his drink, and then he said, “I’m going to get right to it. We only have preliminary findings on the ballistics so far, but enough points match to conclude that the gun that killed Cortez was the same as the piece that did Lichtman. And enough of a match to conclude that that gun was the one used in the Smith killing thirty years ago. So how did you know that? You aren’t that smart, and no one’s that lucky. You’re holding out on me and that could be a mistake.”
I took another sip of beer and said, “I’m working a case—a case that has dovetailed with the Cortez murder. I stumbled onto the information about the gun.”
“You didn’t ‘stumble onto’ shit,” said Hobbs angrily. “No, you have been involved in this from Day One, even before Day One, and I’m still not certain whether it’s unwittingly or not. The shit is now rising to the surface and more is to come. So it still hasn’t occurred to you that someone is out there with that same twenty-five Beretta waiting for you?”
“You’ve made that point before.”
“You’re the key to breaking this case. I don’t know precisely how, but you are. Muriel might be too. Where is she?”
“I may find her soon.”
“Bullshit. You know who and where she is. I also believe you have also found out shit on Cortez I don’t know. Don’t fuck with me, Holiday. Look, it’s in your best interests to close this case. Not just for your personal safety, but because there’s a reward of seventy-five thousand dollars and that might soon go up to a hundred thousand.” Hobbs lowered his voice to add, “Here’s how it can play out: the reward is yours, but the credit for breaking the case goes to Captain Horace Hobbs and the Berkeley PD.”
I shrugged, looked at him, and said nothing. Everything I had heard and read about Hobbs seemed to be coming to pass—from his elastic ethics, to his making up the law as he went along, to his underhanded and brutish tactics, to his taking credit for the work of others. I said nothing and listened.
He sipped from his drink and became angrier. “I am going to close this fucking case! And you’re going to help me, so get on board! I’m going to put my hands on the cocksucker who did the priest!”
His face was scarlet, his eyes bulged, and he was hyperventilating.
I kept my voice even as I said, “What is it, Hobbs? Why do you want it so bad? Do you want to be Ted Williams and hit a home run in your last at-bat? You want to put to rest the rumors about all the heavy-handed shit you’ve done to make cases? You want a book deal? You want to spend your golden years as a commentator on Fox News? Maybe you’re a refugee from some popular novel: you know, a burnout case with nothing left to do but search for some personal salvation?”
Hobbs finished his drink. He was popeyed and breathing in short gasps.
“Fuck your burnout case bullshit, Fox News, and you. You know, there are a lot of things I don’t like about you, Holiday. I don’t like the way you wear an Italian sports coat and drive a Jaguar convertible like both those items are your birthright. And I don’t like the fact that you can stop drinking after two beers, or that you walked on a shitload of crimes that by all accounts you were culpable of. I also find it very irritating that you know one dope-addict, queer French poet from another dope-addict, queer French poet. But none of that really bothers me. What really pisses me off is that a candy-ass civilian like you has the balls to think he could possibly understand what motivates a man like me.”
Hobbs sipped his drink and seemed to begin composing himself. Then, staring into his half-empty glass, he spoke softly and said, “You start hunting birds, rabbits, then deer, and you’re good at it, and you like it. Then you start hunting humans. Humans who kill. And if you have the brains and the guts for it, then you become good at it, and then you like it. Finally, you like it so much that you don’t like anything else anymore.”
Without our requesting them, Mary brought over another beer for me and another Mason jar of rye whiskey for Hobbs. She placed the drinks on the table and left without a word.
His eyes were no longer bugged out as Hobbs took a sip of his fresh drink. “You were talking about a case dovetailing. That case you’re talking about is you looking for one Jack Polozola.”
“How do you know that?” I said, trying to hide my surprise.
“Because I’m a detective. A real detective. I can deliver up Polozola. But you need to get on board. And soon.”
“By ‘getting on board,’ you mean I’m to share all information and follow your orders, I guess. Also, I suppose you’d like to have the killer try to shoot me?”
“Or succeed in shooting you.” Hobbs gave a crooked smile. “You know, it might close the case either way.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Perhaps because I have never acquired a taste for tofu, New Age metaphysics, or organized anarchy, I have never much liked Eugene, Oregon. As I followed my Internet map directions through the self-proclaimed “World’s Greatest City of the Arts and the Outdoors,” I found my destination on Hilyard Street next to a ski shop and just down the block from the University of Numerology.
A large banner announcing the grand opening of The Simone de Beauvoir Theater hung over the box office. A poster that said Les hommes fatals, starring Muriel Lichtman, graced the marquee. It also stated that the play was written, produced, and directed by Muriel Lichtman. Apparently Muriel Lichtman enjoyed seeing her name in print.
I walked through the open door and went halfway inside. A lone woman was on stage, wearing a Greek mask and delivering a soliloquy. It was obviously a rehearsal. The dimly lit theater was sprinkled with half a dozen women sitting in the audience, none of whom stopped me as I approached the stage.
When the woman in the mask stopped speaking, I told her whom I wanted to see.
“I’m Muriel. But I haven’t the remotest idea who you are,” she said.
I told her who I was and that I was there about Jesus Cortez.
“Jesus?” she said, her mask still in place. She paused for a very long ten seconds and then said, “What about the bastard?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what? I’m busy.”
“Jesus is dead. M
urdered. Every network and cable channel has been carrying the news of his death.”
“Dead?” There was no emotion in her voice. “I don’t believe you, and I don’t watch TV. And I don’t want to talk about him. I said I’m busy.” I was beginning to find it surreal speaking to someone hidden behind a mask. She was silent for a moment and then said, “Opening Night is tomorrow, Friday. I don’t know if you know any theater people, but—”
I started to quote the lines she had highlighted from Apollinaire’s “Marzibel,” but she cut me off mid-stanza.
“Please. Please, stop.” She stood there in silence for a long moment, and then finally said through her mask, “I’ll meet you out front in five minutes.”
A tall woman approached Muriel and asked if everything was all right. Muriel told her not to worry, and said that it was time for a lunch break, anyway.
She no longer had her mask on as she walked out into the gray, refrigerator-light glare of the Oregon morning. Even in the harsh overcast that magnifies every blemish and imperfection, Muriel, thirty-five years old and wearing absolutely no makeup, was stunning. Her dark, Russian Jewish beauty was marked by thick chestnut hair falling loosely on her shoulders, a nose straight as a T-square, high, delicate cheekbones, and chocolate brown eyes made exotic by a slight slant, probably owing to Outer Mongolian Cossack ancestors. At first her mouth seemed too big for her face, until I studied her lips. They were pouty, sensuous, and begging to be kissed.
As I watched her move with the slight duck-walk that comes from practicing ballet, I noticed that she had an unnatural tilt to her head. She worked her chin as if balancing an imaginary tiara. I was reminded of Dumpy’s assessment: “Muriel is insultingly sexy, with exquisite tits, and absolutely the nicest ass ever seen on a white girl.”
“How did you know about Apollinaire?” she insisted as we stood in front of the marquee. “That was personal. Very personal.”
“Now it’s evidence,” I responded.
I explained how Jesus had left no personal effects, only the copy of Alcools with her inscription and her first name. I gave her a shorthand account of how I found her, and told her that because of my friendship with Jesus and my profession, the police had requisitioned me to assist in the investigation. I wanted to know anything she could tell me that might help. She demurred, so I walked to my car and brought out the copy of the Oakland Tribune that I had shown Marisol, Jesus’ former housekeeper, in San Diego. Muriel stared at the photograph of Jesus on the front page.
“Oh, my God, it’s him,” she said, running her index finger across his photographed mouth. “Darling,” she said quietly to the photo, and then murmured something I couldn’t hear. She took the paper and held it to her chest. “May I have this?”
I told her she could. It occurred to me that she might not know or even care where the stage ended and the real world began. The affected way she moved and spoke suggested that all of life was a drama to her. I began to doubt that Muriel could put a coin in a parking meter without making a production out of it.
We crossed the street to a coffee shop called Java Addiction. Muriel ordered several types of Indonesian coffee that neither I nor the barista had ever heard of. She seemed to take this as a personal affront, and then grudgingly ordered a soy latte with foam, seven other ingredients, and three special instructions. I was halfway through my Americano when Muriel took the coffee back for the second time. An apologetic barista brought her third attempt at pleasing Muriel to the table.
“It’s cold,” Muriel said, exasperated, and set it aside. I wanted to point out that the temperature was largely due to the coffee having been originally poured fifteen minutes earlier. I offered to get her a Calistoga or Perrier, but she declined. I was relieved that I didn’t have to find out just how long it would take to get her an acceptable glass of water.
“I spent thousands of dollars on a year and a half of sessions with three different therapists doing nothing but talking about Jesus. As I have become somewhat practiced at it, I am willing to tell you whatever you want to know. But first, let me define my relationship with him. At first I thought it was just the sex. Then I wanted to believe that I was with him to piss off my dead mother one last time. For a while I was convinced that I was with him for the novelty of having an intellectual discussion with a handsome man. Then I had a breakthrough.” She looked at me, and then looked above my shoulder and a long way into the distance for several minutes, finally looking back at me once again. This seemed to me to be some Method-acting technique. Then she asked, “Have you read The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler?”
“The detective writer? No, I don’t read pulp fiction.”
“Chandler is hardly just pulp fiction.” Muriel bristled. “The point is that Chandler wrote, ‘The French have a saying for everything and the bastards are always right.’ In the case of Jesus and me, it was l’amour fou.”
“Crazy love.”
“You’ve heard of it.”
“I’m familiar with it,” I said, thinking of Angelina. “It’s an obsessive, passionate, irrational, and unsustainable relationship.”
“That about says it. I knew we were star-crossed lovers from the start. I knew it could go nowhere, I mean, here I am, me, in love with a Catholic priest. A Mexican and a borderline alcoholic at that. When I say Mexican, I am referring to class differences, not ethnic ones. But it was l’amour fou, and while I knew it was doomed, still I thought it would never end. And to add insult to injury, he dumps me. Nobody dumps me!” For a moment she seemed to lose control, then she took a deep breath and looked away.
“Fuck me,” she said suddenly, and then was quiet.
I waited for her to continue.
“I just remembered what I said to Jesus the last time I saw him. I was so angry, and he was being his secretive self and wouldn’t tell me the real reason he was leaving. I knew it was something else, but he just bullshitted me about his being a priest, and then he became very patronizing and said, ‘Is there anything I can do?’ And I said, ‘Yes, you could die very soon. You could do that for me.’ Oh God, it reminds me of the line from The Rich Girl: ‘Words are like bells, they cannot be un-rung.’ ”
“Raymond Chandler again?”
“Hardly,” she said, lifting her chin and adjusting her imaginary tiara, “The author is Muriel Lichtman.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Every Tuesday night for a year, Jesus and I had drinks together and friendly arguments—which he called dialogues—about everything and everyone from the Apocalypse, to Salvador Dali, to bebop jazz, to which sport was superior, soccer or American football. In all that time he never mentioned his affair with a world-class beauty or that his father was a notorious international criminal. What bothered me was just what else there was that he hadn’t mentioned.
Muriel continued to talk about Jesus. “When I first met him, he hadn’t been in this country that long. I say that because he didn’t know colloquial expressions. When he first asked me out, I said ‘No way, José,’ and he looked at me very seriously and said, ‘My name is Jesus, not José.’ ” She giggled girlishly. The sun had just come out and we were walking down a tree-lined South Eugene street. Muriel seemed to be letting her guard down.
She told me how she’d been doing a summer stock production of A Doll’s House in a San Diego theater where it was the custom for the cast to greet the audience after the play. A handsome, well-dressed Latino gentleman approached her, telling her he had seen a number of productions of the play and that she was the finest Nora he’d ever seen. He asked to buy her a coffee and she flatly refused. He persisted and finally she acquiesced.
Once she started talking to him she couldn’t stop; she thought he was a professor, a writer, or maybe a theater critic. They made love the night they met and it wasn’t until breakfast the next day that he told her he was a priest. It took a while for her to be truly convinced of that, but by then it was too late. Muriel was in love, not for the first time, but she had never before
experienced what she termed “nineteenth-century English Gothic novel in-love.” They were discreet and the affair went on for several months, and then right in the middle of it, her father was murdered. Three weeks later, the relationship was over. The play ended a week later and she never saw him, spoke to him, or heard from him again.
“Did you ever figure out why he broke up with you?” I asked.
“He was a very secretive man. On most levels I never knew what was up with him. While I felt close to him, he remained an enigma. He shut down when I tried to discuss his past. All he told me about it was the horror of his whole village dying when he was a young child, and the abject poverty of his adolescent years on the streets of border towns. It was almost like a Dickens novel.”
I wanted to tell her that the story he told of his youth was exactly like a Dickens novel: fiction. “This may seem indelicate and maybe it is, but as you say Jesus was secretive and the police and I are having trouble finding out about his personal life. Do you know if there were other women?”
Muriel looked away, and then turning toward me, said, “I am certain I was neither his first conquest nor likely his last.”
“Conquest?”
“Whatever else a woman is to a man, she is always a conquest—no matter who the man is or who the woman is.” Her tone seemed to invite a debate.
While I considered how, or if, I should respond, a young woman in her twenties with freckles, glasses, and a studious look walked towards us.
“Oh, Christ,” said Muriel. “I can’t deal with this bimbo now. Play along with me.”
“Play along?”
“Be a theater critic from an out-of-town newspaper.”
I stood there, considering how to play my assigned role.
“Ms. Lichtman,” said the young woman, announcing her name and her college’s newspaper.
“I know who you are, and thanks for sending your article about me and my work. If I understood your critique, I have watered down, obfuscated, and otherwise distorted the philosophy of the namesake of my theater.”
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