In the old days she wouldn’t have asked such a question. “I just wanted to chat. You sound tired. What’re you doing there so late?”
“Trying to round up my wandering husband. We’re supposed to go to a cocktail party, a fund-raiser for”-she named a liberal state senator-“and I was supposed to pick Hank up here. But he seems to have flown the co-op.”
I laughed, glad that not everything had changed. “Flown the co-op” was a pun Anne-Marie and I had invented, part of that special shared vocabulary that exists between good friends. But this fund-raiser!...
Hank, in spite of a growing fondness for designer suits and first editions of obscure “cult” writers, has managed to survive this decade with his leftist ideals relatively intact. (Although he likes to think of them as slightly to that side of Mao Zedong, while everyone else claims they’re more compatible with the philosophy of FDR.) The candidate Anne-Marie had just mentioned was one Hank considered a cop-out artist-and not a very good one at that.
I suggested, “Try the Remedy.”
“That’s what Ted said.” She sounded particularly dispirited now. “He’s been spending a lot of time there lately, hasn’t he?”
“A fair amount.”
“He never used to drink this much.”
“No.” I had half a mind to tell her about our drunken lunch, but now wasn’t the time. She needed to extricate Hank from the clutches of the Remedy, and I needed to check for any messages. “Look,” I said, “let’s talk soon.”
“Why, has Hank said something to you about me?”
“No. You’re my friend, and I’m worried about you.”
When she spoke, she sounded slightly chastened. “We’ll talk soon. I promise.”
“Good.” In order not to further delay her, I asked for Ted.
Ted is the world’s perfect secretary-so long as you can put up with his eccentricities. He is thoroughly immersed in his job, willing to work long hours for very little pay. He is blessed wit a set of hyperactive ears and a nose that can smell gossip at seven leagues. If sworn to secrecy, however, Ted will defend the pact to the death. I, for one, have often found his talents highly useful.
Tonight he read me my message slips without complaint-even though I’d interrupted his dinner. There were five: from three clients, Rae, and my mother. (I knew I should have called Ma on Sunday; when she starts phoning the office, she’s worried and I’m in deep trouble.) Bob Choteau hadn’t called.
Talking with Bob-if and when he decided he wanted his twenty dollars-could be vital. I said to Ted, “Are you going to be there all evening?”
“As far as I know.” Which meant until something interesting turned up.
“As long as you are, would you make sure to answer the phone?”
“Are you expecting an important call?”
“Yes. I really need to get the message if this Bob Choteau calls. And look, if he does, and you decide to go out before you hear from me, would you leave the message at this number?” I gave him Daphne and Charlie’s.
It upset me that Bob hadn’t called by now. Possibly he had gotten more drunk or stoned and had forgotten all about my visit to the mill. But when I set the receiver back in the cradle and looked toward the front of the print shop, I saw a far better lead walk in with his daughters.
TWENTY-THREE
After Charlie had left with the girls, Gerry and I walked over to a coffee shop on Haight called The Beanery. Three days of uninterrupted good weather had finally brought the fog in. It gusted out of the park and down the street, making pedestrians pull their outerwear closer around them and head for home.
Gerry had on the same baggy houndstooth jacket he’d worn Sunday. He hunched inside it, hands deep in its pockets, head thrust forward as if he were hunting for change on the sidewalk. I had the idea that tonight the oversized jacket was less a fashion statement than a shell within which he could hide from the emotional storms around him. There was no way of telling what he was feeling or thinking inside there; his defeated posture was sharply at variance with the little smile that continually played on his lips.
The air inside The Beanery was warm and steamy, its aroma an odd mixture of various types of coffee, in which no single one dominated. I studied the chalkboard that listed the day’s offerings. To me, coffee is coffee-sometimes good, often bad, usually indifferent. This array of roasts and blends and what I supposed could be called nationalities confused me. It was a moment before I settled on Kenya Peaberry-simply because I liked the name. Gerry ordered a New Orleans blend that the clerk warned was exceptionally heavy in chicory. That seemed to please him; possibly he found the choice of something bitter as apt as I did.
We took our mugs to a table in the window bay that overlooked the sidewalk. I removed my old suede jacket and hung it over the back of the chair, but Gerry kept his jacket on, not even bothering to unbutton it. He sipped his coffee and made a face. I tasted mine: it was odd, slightly acidic, yet smooth and winey. I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not.
“How’s Vicky doing?” I asked.
The folds of the jacket rippled in what I interpreted as a shrug. “By the time we left, she’d barricaded herself in the bathroom. There’s a phone in there, so it probably means she was getting ready to call her shrink.”
“She’s in therapy, then?”
“If you can call it that. She’s been seeing this woman for eight years. There’s been no visible progress. I think she lies to her. I know she doesn’t tell her the whole truth.”
“How do you know that?”
“Vicky tells me about the sessions-in every excruciating detail. Here’s one example: Originally she started seeing the shrink because our relationship wasn’t all she wanted it to be, but she didn’t want to divorce me, either. She sat in the woman’s office for two solid years talking about everything else under the sun before she got around to admitting what the real problem was.”
“Is that so unusual?” I asked, thinking of Hank talking around and around his own problem.
“I don’t know. Maybe not. I don’t believe in therapy, myself.”
I didn’t either-at least not for myself. The idea of baring my soul to a total stranger was both distasteful and unnerving. “I’d probably lie, too,” I said. “Therapists seem so…well wrapped that I’d be afraid mine was sitting in judgment of me. I’d want to make myself look better than I really am.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s Vicky’s problem. It’s ironic, though; she wants to look good for someone she’s paying to listen to her problems, but she can’t be bothered to put up a good front for her own kids. They’re going to have great memories of their mother when they grow up: stoned or drunk, screaming or throwing things. I’m not saying I haven’t contributed to Vicky’s problems. God knows I’ve got problems of my own. But I’ve tried not to inflict them on the kids.”
“A lot of people have worse memories of their childhoods than Lindy or Betsy will. They’re good kids, they’ll survive, and probably be all the stronger for it.”
“Yeah, well, they won’t have to live with it much longer.” The incongruous little smile flickered across his lips. “I’m filing for divorce and asking for custody. My lawyer says I have a damned good chance, given Vicky’s mental state.”
It didn’t surprise me. “Is this what precipitated her fit tonight?”
“That and other things.”
“Such as Irene Lasser leaving?”
He sighed. “I was wondering when you’d put aside your phony concern for Vicky and get down to business. Irene told me you’d tracked her down and forced her to talk to you.”
My anger flared. I took a deliberate sip of coffee to allow myself time to get my emotions under control. “In the first place, Gerry, my concern for Vicky isn’t ‘phony.’ I don’t like to see anyone in the state she’s in. And while I realize it would take a psychiatrist to help her in any significant way, I’m available if she needs to talk or just to have someone hold her hand. Secondly, I didn’t exactly
‘force’ Irene to talk to me. By the time we finished, she seemed damned glad we’d talked.”
“That isn’t what she told me.”
“I suspect she was just saying what she did to stay on your good side. She was quite nervous because someone in your household had taken food to Bob Choteau. Did you admit you were the one who’d done it?”
“Yes. And Irene understands I did it to protect her.”
“To protect her from Choteau?”
“Of course.”
“If you really wanted to do that, why didn’t you just pay him to go away?”
Gerry looked down into his cooling coffee. Beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead-whether from wearing the heavy jacket in such a warm place or from stress, I couldn’t tell.
“Gerry,” I said, “are you having an affair with Irene?”
No answer.
“Vicky thinks so. The girls suspect it, though they won’t even admit it to themselves.”
He looked up, the strange smile flickering. In stark contrast to it, his eyes were black and mirthless, their pupils dilated so much that I thought of the black holes in the universe that astronomers talk about.
“I’m going to marry Irene,” he said. “As soon as my divorce from Vicky is final, I’ll take my girls and go away with Irene and Susan.”
He didn’t look like a man who was contemplating future happiness. Unease stirred in me. I said, “Did you tell Vicky that?”
“Yes. This afternoon.”
“Is that why Irene left?”
“No.”
“Why, then? Did it have to do with Frank Wilkonson’s murder?”
He didn’t appear surprised I knew about it. “In a way. She received a phone call from her former stepson around noon. I don’t know how he knew where she was, but he did. He told her Wilkonson was dead.”
Now Gerry began speaking quickly in a peculiar singsong rhythm. My unease blossomed into full anxiety, and I gripped my coffee mug with suddenly cold fingers.
“She came to my studio,” he went on. “I was working at home, as I always do in the initial stages of a project. I thought she was there to remind me to eat lunch. I often forget to eat when I’m working well. She told me about the call and said she was afraid. First Rudy and then Frank-murdered. She said she knew who must have done it, and that she couldn’t stay at the house anymore. I told her I would take her away. We’d pick up the girls at school and go someplace safe. She wouldn’t let me do that, and she wouldn’t tell me where she planned to go. She just packed up and called a cab and went. I don’t know where she is now. But I’ll find her. And we’ll be married. Just like I planned.”
“Was this before or after you told Vicky you were filing for divorce?”
“Before. About an hour after Irene left, Vicky came back from one of her damned meetings. I told her she’d have to pick up the girls herself, and she started ranting. She went on and on about how busy she was with all her important causes. About how tired she was because she was trying to set things right. About how good she’d been to Irene. About how much she’d done for her and Susan. About how rotten it was of Irene to leave without giving any notice. Then she started in about Irene and me. She was really laying into Irene. I couldn’t listen to that kind of talk. So…I told her.” His voice cracked and he looked down again.
I felt slightly breathless, as if my emotions had been running to keep pace with his. To give us both time to pull ourselves together, I said, “Do you want some more coffee?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Get me some decaf French roast or something, would you? I can’t drink this shit.”
When I came back with two fresh mugs, Gerry was staring out the window at the fog. I set them down. He didn’t look at me, just picked up the coffee, drank, and watched the drifting grayness.
I said, “Gerry, what kind of cab did Irene leave in?”
“What? Oh, Checker. She always used them when Vicky’s car wasn’t available. The number’s posted on the bulletin board next to the phone in our kitchen. Why?”
“I may be able to trace her. What time did she call?”
He glanced hopefully at me. “It was about quarter to one. I know because I looked at my watch, to see how long it would be before Vicky was due to come home. Vicky hates Irene, but she likes having someone to deal with the girls, and I thought she might be able to persuade her to stay.”
The idea of Gerry using his wife to persuade his mistress to stay didn’t set well with me. I said, “You know, Gerry, this isn’t the first time Irene’s had an affair with a married man.”
Anger flickered deep in his eyes. “You mean Frank Wilkonson.”
“Yes. Did you ever think it might be a pattern with her-”
“Now you sound just like Vicky. That’s the first thing she brought up when she accused me of being involved with Irene. I know all about Wilkonson. That was different. Different from what we have. So was my marriage. I love Irene in a way I never loved Vicky, never loved any woman. I’d do anything for her.”
That brought me to the real reason I’d wanted to talk with him. “Such as?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Vicky says you did something for Irene that you would never have done for her. Something that could ruin everything. What was that?”
He put his hands to his forehead and swiped at the beads of sweat. “When did she say that?”
It was possible he didn’t remember; he probably tuned out a great deal of his wife’s ranting. “Saturday night-to you.” When he didn’t react, I played a wild card. “Sometime after Frank Wilkonson disappeared near the Murphy Windmill.”
His pupils dilated even more. I thought of the black holes again, and how their gravitational pull supposedly is so great that nothing escapes them. Then I realized I’d moved back from the table, away from the pull of Gerry’s stare.
He licked his lips and seemed to fumble for words. When he spoke, the dryness of his mouth made his voice thin and reedy. “Wilkonson never came to the windmill,” he said.
“Yes, he did. He left his car on the drive and walked toward the mill. That’s the last I saw of him.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes, Gerry, I was there. I followed him all the way from the ranch to San Francisco. He disappeared in the park. As far as I know, no one ever saw him again-except his killer.”
Gerry shook his head. He raised his mug, but his hand was trembling so much that the coffee spilled down onto the sleeve of his jacket. He had to use both hands to lower the mug to the table.
“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus, am I in trouble.”
There was only one reason for him to feel he was in trouble. I said, “Did you call him and ask him to come to the windmill?”
“No! I…no, I didn’t.”
“You had Bob Choteau call him, then. That’s why Bob expects you to give him more money. That was why you didn’t just buy Bob off in the first place. You planned to use him.”
No response. Gerry merely stared at me.
“I suppose Choteau told Wilkonson he had information about Irene’s whereabouts. That would be certain to lure him to the mill. Did you hire Bob to kill him, too?”
“No! It wasn’t like that!” Gerry realized he was shouting now and looked around before leaning across the table and speaking softly, rapidly. “Look, Choteau did call Wilkonson. Promised to take him to Irene if he’d come to the mill. Instead, I went to meet him.”
“Why the windmill? And why didn’t you just call Wilkonson yourself, rather than have Choteau do it?”
“I suppose it was stupid to have him make the call, but it was in the back of my mind that if I heard Wilkonson’s voice, confronted the reality of the man, I might not go through with it. As for the mill, it would be dark and deserted-I’d bribed Choteau and his pals to stay away by buying them booze. Wilkonson wouldn’t be able to see me all that well, and there would be no clues as to Irene’s whereabouts.”
“Did you plan to kill him?�
�
“Christ! What do you think I am? I was going to give him some information that would make him leave us alone, that’s all. And if that didn’t work, I was prepared to pay him. I just wanted him to go away, so we could be happy.”
His voice had slipped into the singsong cadence again, underscored by raw emotion. “You can understand that, can’t you? All we wanted was to be happy. Is it so goddamned bad to want to be happy?”
It is, I thought, if you destroy other people’s lives in order to achieve happiness. I said, “Tell me what happened with Wilkonson.”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Gerry. You went to the trouble of luring him there-”
“He never showed. I waited inside the mill for two hours, but he never came.”
“That can’t be. I saw him walk across the road from his car. It wasn’t more than ten minutes, fifteen at the outside, before I went inside the mill. He wasn’t there-and neither were you.”
“I tell you, I waited two hours! I waited until ten, and then I gave up and went home.”
“Ten? He arrived there after one in the morning.”
“Why would he have done that? The appointment was for eight. What happened was, Choteau reached him around four. Wilkonson said he had to go back to the ranch offices for a while, but he’d leave early, in time to get there by eight. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have wanted to be late; he thought he was going to be taken to Irene.”
“He was late, though. I don’t know what delayed him, but I guess he got there as soon as he could. Whoever killed him must have known about your meeting-and I doubt it was Bob Choteau.”
Gerry became very still. He didn’t even seem to breathe.
“Who else knew you were meeting Wilkonson, Gerry?”
“Vicky,” he said quickly. Too quickly.
“Who else?”
He shook his head, horror seeping into his eyes.
“Who else?”
“…Irene. But she didn’t know where, only that I was going to talk with him.”
“She could have followed you.”
He was silent.
It was coming together, I thought. All of it.
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