Trophies and Dead Things

Home > Other > Trophies and Dead Things > Page 5
Trophies and Dead Things Page 5

by Marcia Muller


  The lobby was decorated in high-tech gray and black, with blown up photos of KSTS personalities on the walls. As I waited for the receptionist—who was answering phones, putting people on hold, getting back to other callers—I studied the picture of Jess Goodhue. The anchorwoman had a pert, almost elfin face, with sleek dark brown hair that swept back from her forehead and ears, its ends curling under just above her shoulders. In spite of her youthful cuteness—which she probably found a liability—the photo exuded a forceful presence. Her eyes met that of the camera candidly’ their direct gaze and the set of her mouth showed determination and intelligence. Even before seeing her in person, I sensed Goodhue was a woman who demanded respect–and got it.

  The receptionist finished with the last of the waiting callers. “May I help you?” he asked.

  I told him I wanted to speak with Goodhue and handed him one of my cards. He dialed an extension and spoke into the phone, then said to me, “She wants to know what this is in reference to.”

  I said it was in reference to an inheritance left her by an All Souls client.

  He spoke into the phone again, then replaced the receiver. “She says she’s got to review a couple more scripts, but if you want to talk afterward, while she’s doing her makeup, that’s fine with her.”

  “Fine with me, too.”

  “Okay, why don’t you—“ He broke off and waved to a young women who was entering from the street, bearing a grease-stained bag of what looked and smelled to be Chinese carry-out. “Hey, Marge, would you take this lady back to the newsroom and point her toward Jess?”

  Marge nodded and motioned for me to follow her; the receptionist buzzed us through an interior door near his desk. The newsroom was the first on the left off the long hall beyond it.

  My initial impression was of noise; voices, telephone bells, the clatter of typewriters, the squawk of police-band radios. A half dozen TV monitors were mounted on the wall, pictures turned on, but sound muted. Silent spectral images moved across their screens: Woody Woodpecker, a hand-wringing soap-opera heroine, Oprah Winfrey, earnest individuals extolling the virtues of baby diapers and spray wax and deodorant.

  Marge said, “First cubicle to the right of the assignment desk,” and went back into the hall.

  Directly ahead of me was a long desk on a raised platform. Three men and a woman sat at it—talking on the phones, scribbling notes, scrutinizing the monitors. I looked to the right and saw a row of modular cubicles. As I started over there I had to dodge a woman who rushed through the door behind me dragging a bulky tote bag by its strap and flashing a victory sign toward the assignment desk.

  There were two people in the first cubicle: a dark haired woman seated in a swivel chair at the desk and a tall, angular man who loomed over her, stabbing his finger at a typewritten page. The woman’s face was not visible, but I assumed she was Jess Goodhue. I moved away from the opening of the cubicle and leaned against its wall, idly observing the activity in the newsroom. The woman I’d nearly collided with was at the assignment desk talking with a bald-headed man. After a moment she hurried to one of a row of smaller desks on the far side of the room, plunked her tote bag down, and began rolling paper into a typewriter while still standing. The bald-headed man got up and went to a board that resembled an airplane arrivals-and-departures schedule mounted on the wall behind him. He rubbed out a couple of notations with the side of his hand, then used a blue crayon to enter new ones.

  A voice came from inside the cubicle—Goodhue’s, not so carefully modulated as it was on her newscasts. “No, Marv, that’s got to be rewritten. I don’t see how we can compare Barbara Bush to Mother Theresa.”

  Marv said something that I couldn’t quite make out.

  “No. I am not expressing a political bias. This is one I think even Babs would agree with me on.”

  The man left the cubicle without another word and staled toward the row of desks on the other side of the room.

  “That’s a Republican for you,” Goodhue said. I glanced into the cubicle, saw she was paging through a script, and stepped back.

  After a few more minutes a thin blond-haired woman approached, her step tentative, expression anxious. She stopped a foot from the cubicle’s entrance, as if afraid to go further. “Jess? The order of the stories—do you really want the mercy killing moved ahead of the drug busts and the new environmental plan?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s lost where you had it.”

  “But—”

  “It’s an important story, Linda. It’s about . . . just reorder it.”

  Linda remained where she was, silent and indecisive.

  Goodhue added, “And when you see Roberta, tell her the lead-in to the drug busts needs more punch—a lot more. I want to see new copy by four-thirty.”

  Linda turned quickly and walked away.

  Goodhue said to herself in a low voice, “You get too abrupt with them on days like this. It’s something you’ve got to work on.”

  I stepped up to the entrance of the cubicle and saw she had pushed back from her desk, extending her arms in a little stretch. “Ms. Goodhue?”

  She looked up, then snapped her fingers, “You’re the woman from the law firm . . . what was it?”

  “All Souls Legal Cooperative.”

  “”Right. I know of you people. Did a series on alternative legal services back when I was a field reporter. McCone, is it?”

  “Sharon McCone.”

  She stood and came forward, clasping my hand in a strong grip. “Call me Jess, everybody does. Let’s go upstairs, huh? I have to make up for the three-fifty-five teaser.”

  “The . . . ?”

  She started through the busy newsroom toward the hall. “A one-minute spot. You’ve probably seen hundreds of them; ‘Coming up on the six o’clock news.’ ”

  “Of course.” I trailed her down the hall. Goodhue was not as tall as I—five two or three to my own five six—but her brisk pace made up for her shorter stride. As she clattered down the hall in high-heeled shoes that matched her smart turquoise dress, she kept up a running chatter.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting, but things are pretty frantic, and they’ll get positively hairy from here on out. I’ve got to make up, do the spot, go over the scripts again with my co-anchor. You came at the right time, though; nobody, absolutely nobody, bothers me in my dressing room.”

  At the end of the hallway was a winding iron staircase. Goodhue led me up it, and down another long hall, past other rooms that hummed with activity. “Sports and weather,” she said, waving her hand. “They’re pretty much autonomous of the newsroom.” Close to the end of the hall she opened a door and motioned me inside. “And this,” she said, “is where I go when I want privacy.”

  It wasn’t much of a dressing room: a long counter below a bulb-edged mirror; two wicker chairs, both somewhat raveled; a rack with changes of clothes hanging from it; a small adjoining bathroom. The counter was littered with cosmetics. Among them stood a vase of yellow roses that had seen better days.

  Goodhue shut the door and grinned wryly at me. “Well, it ain’t Broadway, but it’s mine.”

  “I don’t think they have it so good on Broadway, either.”

  “Probably not. You’ve got to go to Hollywood for the glitzy stuff.” She frowned at the browning roses, swept them form the vase, and jammed them into a wastebasket under the counter. “Sit, while I make up,” she said, and plunked down onto a stool in front of the mirror. “What’s this about an inheritance?”

  I sat in one of the wicker chairs—gingerly at first. “One of our clients has named you as a beneficiary in his will. Perry Hilderly. Do you know him?”

  She considered, picking up a bottle of makeup base and beginning to apply it with practiced strokes. “The name’s familiar. Who is . . . was he?”

  “A tax accountant. Worked for a small firm out in the Avenues.”

  “Wait a minute!” She snapped her fingers. “Wasn’t he the last victim of the sniper?”

  “Ri
ght.”

  “Weird. Why would he leave me money?”

  “I don’t know. He made a holograph will—self written, without the aid of an attorney—and left no explanation.”

  “I don’t get it. Would it be crass to ask how much he left me?”

  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars.” More, I reminded myself, if Grant went through with signing the document renouncing his inheritance, since it had been left on a share-alike basis.

  Goodhue’s hand paused in mid-stroke near her hairline. “Jesus! Why on earth . . . ?”

  “I’d hoped you could tell me.”

  She shook her head, set the makeup bottle down, and opened a compact of blush. After rummaging around on the counter for a brush, she began applying color to her cheekbones. “As far as I know, I never met the man. Tell me more about him.”

  “Before I do that, I have a few questions. Does the name Thomas Y. Grant mean anything to you?”

  “Grant . . . Tom Grant, the attorney?”

  “Right.”

  “I interviewed him for that series on alternative legal services I mentioned. Not that I approve of his particular alternative, but it fit with the theme. Actually, I was surprised to find him quite charming.”

  It was a temptation to ask what she’d thought of Grant’s fetishes, but I merely asked, “What about someone named Libby Heikkinen?”

  “No.”

  “David Arlen Taylor?”

  “Uh-uh. Who are these people?”

  “Your co-beneficiaries. Hilderly divided his estate four ways.”

  “This Hilderly must have been a wealthy man.”

  “Not in the usual sense. He inherited some money, invested well, and didn’t have expensive habits.”

  “And he lived here in the city? Of course he did; I remember that he was shot on Geary, near his apartment. Was he from here originally?”

  “I don’t know much about his background, just that he was a radical during the Vietnam era, one of the founders of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.”

  “Berkeley!” She spun on the stool, the cosmetic brush falling from her fingers.”

  “Is that significant?”

  She ignored the question. “What else can you tell me about him?”

  “He was kicked out of college, worked for a magazine for a while, until they sent him to Vietnam as a correspondent. He stayed there for some time, had a son by a Vietnamese woman. She and the child were killed by mortar fire, and then Hilderly came back to the States. Married, had two more boys, divorced, and lived very quietly in the Inner Richmond until he was shot.”

  Goodhue was sitting very still now, hands locked together on her lap, makeup brush forgotten on the floor at her feet. “Just thing of that,” she said after a moment. “I reported the story of his death.” There was an odd tremor in her voice, an emotion I couldn’t define.

  “Are you sure you never met him?”

  ”Very sure. The Free Speech Movement—that was right around the time I was born.”

  “It started in the fall of nineteen sixty-four.”

  Goodhue’s focus was inward, searching. After a bit she said softly, “I was born in January of nineteen sixty-five.”

  I waited, but she didn’t elaborate, said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”

  “What I’m trying to say is . . . this Perry Hilderly may have been my father.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The statement came from so far out in left field that it took me a moment to formulate a response. “Why would you think that?” I finally asked.

  “Because my mother was at Berkeley then.”

  “So were thousands of other people.”

  “But not—” She broke off, looking at her watch. “Dammit! It’s a long story, and I don’t’ have much time.”

  “Why don’t you start telling me now. I can wait around for the rest as long as necessary.”

  “All right.” She swiveled back toward the mirror and fussed nervously with her hair. “As I said before, I was born in January of nineteen sixty-five. Out of wedlock.” She paused, looking at me in the mirror, as if she was waiting for some reaction. When she didn’t get one, she went on. “My mother’s name was Jenny Ruhl. She was a campus radical, heavily into the protest movement. Or so I found out later.”

  “You never knew her?”

  Goodhue turned toward me again, backlit by the glow from the bare frosted bulbs around the mirror. It softened the planes and curves of her face and she appeared even younger. When she spoke, her voice was not as crisp and self-assured as before.

  “Oh, I knew her. I can even remember her—some. But I’m getting ahead of my story. Anyway, my mother had me on January seventeenth. My father was listed as ‘unknown’ on my birth certificate. My mother came from a well-to-do Orange County family; I guess a lot of the so-called revolutionaries had affluent, conservative backgrounds. For whatever reason, she never let her people know about me. Instead, she used the allowance they sent her to farm me out to an older couple here in San Francisco who ran a little day-care center and took in kids whose parents couldn’t care for them—foster kids from the welfare department, as well as others like me. Ben and Nilla Goodhue. They—”

  There was a knock at the door. A woman’s voice called, “Jess, you’re due on the set. Hurry up!”

  Goodhue started. “Jesus, I almost missed the spot! I’ve got to get my ass upstairs on the double. Do you mind staying here—they don’t like strangers on the set.”

  “Sure, I’ll wait.”

  After she left the minutes passed slowly. I shifted on the wicker chair—which had grown uncomfortable—and tried to fit Goodhue’s claim that Hilderly might have been her father into what I already knew. I supposed it was possible that Hilderly had fathered her and written her into his will in a too-late attack of conscience. But that didn’t explain the bequest to Tom Grant. And what about Heikkinen and Taylor? Other children he failed to acknowledge? Could any young man have been that prolific—even in the sexually free sixties?

  When Goodhue came back, her forehead was beaded with moisture. She mopped it with a tissue and set about repairing her makeup. “I’ve never been that late,” she said. “Never. Slid into the chair with only five seconds to spare.”

  “I shouldn’t have let you lose track of time.”

  “Not your fault. Look, I have maybe ten more minutes, then I’ve got to get down to the newsroom and go over the scripts with my co-anchor. Where was I?”

  “Ben and Nilla Goodhue.”

  “Right.” The mention of their names banished her preoccupation with the time. A gentle, reminiscent expression stole over her features, and she set down the mascara wand she was using.

  “Ben and Nilla. Great people. Loving people. He was English, proper as could be, except when he was rolling around on the rug with us kids. She was Swedish—the Nilla was short for Gunnilla—and she could warm up a room just with her smile. They lived in the Portola district. It was nice there back then—solid working class, a good ethnic mix. Lots of Italian delis and soul-food places and little corner markets. People had vegetable gardens; the man next door to us kept chickens. It’s not like that anymore; there’s a lot of gang violence, spillover from Bayview and Visitacion Valley—” She broke off and picked up the mascara wand again, as if she’d suddenly reminded herself of the shortness of time.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “that’s where I grew up, in this big house on a corner lot with anywhere from two to six other kids. They came and went. I stayed.”

  “Did your mother visit you?”

  “Occasionally, until I was four. I remember her as pretty, but not very warm. When she held me, I always felt she was afraid she might drop and break me. After she left, I would sit on Ben’s or Nilla’s lap for a long time. I couldn’t understand why, if she was my mother, she didn’t hold me the way they did.

  “What about your father?” Did your mother ever talk about him?”

 
“No, but he visited me once. I was maybe three and a half, close to four. I hoped—or maybe I just imagine I hoped—that they were going to take me away to live with them soon, but then he never came again.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. Over the years I’ve tried to picture him, but it’s all cloudy. The only impression I have is that he might have been from the Southwest, because he wore a string tie. I remember sitting on his lap and playing with it, clicking the little metal ends on the strings together.”

 

‹ Prev