Find Her a Grave

by Collin Wilcox

  “It only ran three weeks off Broadway, Thursday through Saturday,” Bernhardt said. “But the reviews—well—critics are generous the first time around. Which is to say that I’ve still got those reviews.” He smiled, dipped his head, an aw-shucks turn. “All three of them.” Once more, one last time, he waited for the predictable response. But now came the conclusion, the inevitable, regrettable wind-up, no more calculating the laugh lines, nothing left but the bitter truth: “Then, though, I had some problems. Personal problems. And, well, it was time to leave New York. I went to Los Angeles for a year, but it didn’t work out. I had a few power lunches, and got my playwright’s ego stroked. I got a few bit parts in a couple of B movies, too. But that was it for me and Hollywood. I wasn’t raised to spend part of every day driving on freeways. So I came to San Francisco. I love it here. Literally, from my first day in this city, I knew it was for me. It’s been more than ten years now, and I still love San Francisco. However, unlike New York or Los Angeles, it’s impossible to make a living in the acting profession here, let alone the directing profession, or the playwrighting profession. Even actors who work in equity houses here have to have an outside income, usually. Moonlighters, in other words.” Once more he broke off, let the fateful words sink in, watched for the reactions. A few in his audience registered consternation, others registered exasperation. Others appeared to be indifferent.

  “Some of us do commercials,” Bernhardt went on. “I suppose they’re the lucky ones. Then there’s always cab driving, of course, and waiting on tables, the traditional solutions. And, meanwhile—” Bernhardt raised his hands, a graceful gesture that included them all. “Meanwhile, here we are at the Howell Theater. Which is, in my opinion, the best little theater in California. Some of us are hiding out, some of us are still pursuing our dream. And all of us—” Bernhardt moved his right hand to lift a bound copy of East. “All of us are going to cooperate in the absolutely best-ever nonequity production of East, which I think is an excellent play. If the play should close in its first month, the Howell will lose money—yet again. If, however, we’re successful in conveying the magic of East to our audiences, and if, therefore, the play should run for five or six months, then the members of the cast and the volunteer staff might make, say, a thousand dollars each. The director—me—might make five thousand. With luck.” As he said it, delivered the tag line, he looked once more at the upturned faces. Among them, was there the collective willingness and the tenacity and the infernal spark that he could somehow combine into a successful play?

  In the front row a middle-aged woman with a mischievous face and bad posture raised her hand, a question.

  With his business concluded, elapsed time about a half hour, Bernhardt smiled benign encouragement. Questions were always a promising start.

  “Do you moonlight?” she asked, mischief sparkling in her eyes.

  “Yes,” Bernhardt answered. “I do.”

  “May I ask what you do?”

  “Certainly,” Bernhardt answered promptly. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “What?”

  Pleased at the spirited reaction and the general exclamation of surprise, Bernhardt grinned, spread his hands. “Think about it. Flexible hours and pretty good money, if you have the right clients. Plus, for an actor, investigating is a natural. There’s a lot of playacting involved, you know. Otherwise known as little white lies. Bullshitting, in short.”

  2:15 P.M., PDT

  “AND AFTER TONY BACARDO left last night, your mother told you about the treasure. It was the first time she mentioned it to you. Is that right?”

  Angela nodded.

  “But she didn’t tell you the precise location of the treasure—just that it’s buried up in the San Joaquin delta.”

  “Right.”

  “So only she and Bacardo know the precise location of the treasure. They didn’t find out until last night, when they put the six words together.”

  “Yes.”

  Nodding thoughtfully, Bernhardt let a silence fall. They were in his office, once the front bedroom of a turn-of-the-century flat that he had rented on Potrero Hill. Bernhardt sat behind the vintage carved-oak library table that served as a desk; Angela Rabb sat on an aging Victorian love seat that Bernhardt realized he must either junk or have reupholstered.

  Whenever he was puzzled or apprehensive or experiencing unspecified pangs of emotion, Bernhardt was unable to sit still. He rose, walked to the generously proportioned bay window that looked out on Vermont Street. Since it was Saturday afternoon, technically not a workday, he still wore the same Icelandic sweater and wrinkled corduroy slacks he’d worn earlier at the theater. Bernhardt was a tall, lean man, slightly stooped. Standing with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, he looked out at two small boys, Andy and Eugene Ralston, who lived across the street. They were skateboarding down the steep slope of Vermont Street, seemingly courting certain injury, if not a messy death.

  A million dollars in jewels …

  The Mafia …

  He’d first met Angela Rabb two years ago, when she was only eighteen. She’d come to the theater with Ramon Rodriguez, who’d been in his midtwenties. Ramon had been serious about acting, and Angela had been serious about Ramon. She came to the theater with him and helped backstage. Sometimes she’d volunteered to usher and take tickets. Only once had they really talked, she and Bernhardt. As always, she’d come to the theater with Ramon for rehearsal. But that night it had been obvious that she and Ramon weren’t getting along, and during a rehearsal break, drinking diet Coke from the machine, Bernhardt had invited her confidence. Unpredictably, she’d begun to cry. Before anyone could see her crying, he’d guided her through the wings and into a prop room, locking the door behind them. In minutes, she’d told her story. It began with her mother, who’d moved in with a sadistic restaurant owner named Walter Draper. One night, Angela said, her voice choked by the memory, her eyes moving furtively, Draper had gone for both of them, first her mother, then her. No, it hadn’t been an actual rape. Angela had known what to do, how to fight him off.

  The next day Angela had moved out, gone apartment hunting with Ramon Rodriguez. They’d been in love—they thought.

  But after a year she and Ramon had broken up. Determined to make it in Hollywood, Ramon had gone to Los Angeles. Angela had moved in with her mother, who was living alone—again. Bernhardt had asked Angela why Draper had let her mother move out, just like that. Usually, he’d said, men like Draper wouldn’t let their women go so easily. “He didn’t have a choice,” Angela had answered cryptically.

  And now, a half hour ago, a year after the fact, Angela had told him why Draper hadn’t had a choice. When he’d learned that Draper had attacked his daughter and granddaughter, Carlo Venezzio had sent men to break both of Draper’s legs at the knees—after they’d beaten him almost to death.

  Aware that he’d stood at the window too long, Bernhardt returned to his chair behind the desk. Saying: “I really should be talking to your mother. Why didn’t she come with you?”

  “Bacardo’s gone up to the delta to look things over. It’s about seventy miles one way, I think. He probably left this morning. He said he’d contact us when he got back. He told Mom to be home.”

  Bernhardt looked at his watch: two-thirty on a bright, clear Saturday afternoon in April.

  Carlo Venezzio, boss of bosses …

  Everything about Angela’s story could be checked. Either Draper had been attacked, or he hadn’t. Either Venezzio was in prison, or he wasn’t. Either he’d had a heart attack, or he hadn’t. Either he’d had an affair with a beautiful waitress in New York forty years ago, or he hadn’t.

  Leaving, however, the one essential point dangling, impossible to check: Did the Mafia know about the treasure buried somewhere in the delta near Sacramento? As the question surfaced, Bernhardt visualized the San Joaquin delta: a desolate, low-lying terrain crisscrossed by a random network of waterways, a land favored only by millions of birds, a few corpora
te rice growers, assorted fishermen and houseboaters: bayou country without the picturesque trees and swamps. Why, Bernhardt wondered, had Venezzio chosen the delta?

  Did he want to know?

  Yes, he wanted to know.

  The timeless lure of buried treasure, the attraction of potential profit, the tug of simple curiosity: whatever it was, yes, he wanted in. Didn’t he?

  “So.” Bernhardt settled himself behind his desk, decided to make a judicious steeple of his long, bony fingers, decided to take the role of the confessor, the advisor, the savior for hire. Maybe.

  “So,” he began again, slipping into the with-it cadence of the post-teenager. “So, why’re we having this conversation, Angela? What do you think I can do for you?”

  “Well, I—I told you what Bacardo said. He won’t go after the treasure alone.”

  “Let’s suppose,” Bernhardt said, piecing together his thoughts as he spoke, “that I did do it. And let’s suppose something went wrong. Bacardo and I, let’s say, are apprehended by the police with the jewels in our possession. What I’m wondering is, could I be liable to prosecution? On the one hand, I’m not stealing anything. I’m merely helping Bacardo carry out Venezzio’s wishes that your mother collect her inheritance. But the money that bought the jewels was Mafia money. So—” Bernhardt spread his hands, shook his head. “So I don’t know how I’d stand with the law, if the worst happened. And that’s always my first consideration, when I take on a case: how vulnerable I’d be legally.”

  Angela made no response; she simply looked at Bernhardt as if she were waiting for him to decide her fate. Her eyes, Bernhardt noticed, were a light, clear hazel. Beneath a light blouse, her breasts were superbly shaped.

  “And then,” Bernhardt said, “there’s the question of money. My fee, in other words. I get fifty dollars an hour, plus expenses, once I decide to take on a client. I also take the first day’s payment in advance. Four hundred dollars, in other words.”

  For a moment Angela made no reply. Then, a rueful, reluctant admission: “My mother doesn’t have any money, and I don’t either. I don’t know about Tony Bacardo, whether he’d pay for your time.”

  “It’s not my time. It’s my neck. I don’t know much about the Mafia. But, based on what I do know, I sure as hell don’t want to tangle with them. Their intelligence is better than the FBI’s and their enforcement is about a hundred percent. If they decide someone has to die, then he dies. It might take years. But he dies.”

  With the solemnly spoken words, silence fell between them as they stared at each other. Finally Angela ventured: “Could we do it on—?” She frowned, searching for the word. Now she appealed to Bernhardt: “You know—the way lawyers work sometimes. They take a percentage if they win a case.”

  “Contingency.” As he said it, Bernhardt let his eyes thoughtfully wander. For two years, free-lancing, he’d worked for Herbert Dancer, San Francisco’s most prestigious, most expensive agency. When he took contingency work, which was seldom, Dancer charged thirty percent. At least.

  A million dollars in jewels, Angela had said. Plus some gold coins.

  “Yes.” Angela nodded. “That’s it. Contingency.”

  “Hmmm.”

  5:30 P.M., PDT

  THREE CARS AHEAD, FABRESE saw Bacardo signal for a right turn. Yes, he was entering the Hilton’s parking garage. The meaning: Bacardo was keeping the rented Oldsmobile, wasn’t turning it in. The conclusion: Bacardo still had more business in San Francisco.

  Fabrese let his own rental car slow, cautiously falling back. Passing the Hilton, he turned right, then right again, driving slowly through the congested Saturday evening traffic: shoppers and tourists, wandering. He pulled the Taurus into the right lane of Sutter Street, outbound, stopped the car, switched off the engine.

  The time had come to decide. Up to now, it had been enough to hang back, follow Bacardo, make sure that, yes, Louise Rabb was the woman Bacardo had come to see. Meaning that, yes, she was Carlo Venezzio’s daughter.

  Add it all up, then, this one last time. Put all the rumors together with everything he knew—and everything he could guess:

  Forty years ago, Venezzio had just been married, he and Maria. Then he’d met the waitress named Janice Frazer. Proving, some said, that, yes, Venezzio could feel something.

  But, even though Venezzio was already a don then, and moving up, he couldn’t let the woman stay in New York, not with her baby. So he’d sent her back where she’d come from. Over the years, Venezzio’s couriers kept the woman named Janice Frazer supplied with money. When Venezzio went out to the Coast and visited the woman, there were always bodyguards outside the house. So, slowly, the rumors had spread, became common knowledge: Yes, Janice Frazer lived in Los Angeles with her daughter. Yes, Janice Frazer had become a drunk. Yes, she’d died a few years ago, been buried somewhere in California. Where, nobody knew.

  Until now, nobody knew.

  Until now, a few hours ago, nobody in the organization had known. Nobody but Venezzio and Bacardo—and, yes, probably Maranzano.

  The three of them, and now him. Jimmy Fabrese.

  Him.

  In prison, Venezzio had lived like a king on Mafia Row: specially cooked meals, errands run, silk shirts, a phone always available.

  But even kings got heart attacks.

  It was almost a year after the first heart attack that Maranzano had gone to the prison, talked to the don. And then, the next morning, they’d gone to Bacardo’s house, picked up something in a red nylon flight bag, taken it to the airport, where Maranzano had boarded a flight to California.

  California, and then Fowler’s Landing.

  Just as, yesterday, Bacardo had come to San Francisco.

  Just as, today, Bacardo had gone to Fowler’s Landing—

  —Fowler’s Landing, and the graveyard.

  The graveyard, and the grave of Janice Frazer.

  A grave for Janice Frazer, then a grave for Maranzano, less than a week after he’d returned to New York, mission accomplished. See California and die, Mafia insurance. The bigger the job, the bigger the risk, rest in peace.

  Once more, Fabrese checked the time. Would Bacardo’s next stop be Thirty-ninth Avenue, Louise Rabb’s house? What would he tell her? What would they say, what would they decide? Had Bacardo realized he was being followed? Certainly Bacardo expected the organization to keep track of him; it was part of the life for someone like Bacardo. So, even if Bacardo knew he was being followed, he would probably have ignored the tail. Anything else would have been suspicious. To anyone who wanted to know, Bacardo was simply visiting Janice Frazer’s grave, a deathbed promise he’d made to Venezzio, Hail Mary, full of grace.

  In that delta country, there were almost no trees, nothing but flat, low-lying land with a few towns scattered along the edges of the main waterways. He’d been able to fall back a mile and still keep Bacardo’s car in sight. When Bacardo had finally stopped at the graveyard, Fabrese had been able to conceal his car in a small grove of trees less than a hundred yards from the wrought-iron gate. He’d been able to see which grave Bacardo had visited.

  Janice Frazer’s grave.

  Janice Frazer, 1930 to 1984. A short, hard-luck life.

  Bacardo had only stayed for a short time. He’d put flowers on the grave, then stood with head bowed, as if he were reciting a prayer. Then he’d returned to his car and driven back to San Francisco. He’d driven slowly, conservatively. Imitating Bacardo, Fabrese had gone to the grave, stood with his head bowed, facing the headstone. Even though there was no one to see him, he’d moved his lips, as if, like Bacardo, he’d been saying a prayer—

  —a prayer to find a fortune.

  A fortune compact enough to fit in a small red flight bag.

  A fortune hidden somewhere in Fowler’s Landing.

  He started the Taurus’s engine, checked traffic, carefully pulled out into the traffic on Geary Street. The drive to Louise Rabb’s house, even in traffic, would take less than a half hour.


  6:10 P.M., PDT

  SHE’D JUST PICKED UP the remote control wand, about to switch on the TV, when she heard it: the front-door buzzer. Like a shriek from the firepits of hell, the sound echoed and re-echoed, piercing the center of herself.

  Bacardo.

  It had to be Bacardo, come back from Fowler’s Landing. Angela would have used her key, come right in.

  Louise rose from the couch, placed the wand on the TV set, turned to face the front entryway. She’d been waiting for hours, alone in the house. Every hour, every minute, waiting for Angela to return, had drawn her nerves so painfully tight and raw that, once, she’d grown short of breath. She’d been in the bedroom, changing from a sweatshirt and jeans into a skirt and sweater, one of her best cashmeres. Somehow she’d felt that, for whatever the next hours might bring, she must be dressed like a lady, someone to be respected.

  Bacardo at the door. It had to be Bacardo.

  Or was it someone tracking Bacardo?

  The police?

  A Mafia hit man?

  Once more, the buzzer sounded, longer this time, more insistent. She smoothed down her skirt, pushed at her hair, drew a long, deep breath, walked into the entryway, faced the door. Moving closer, she put her eye to the magnifying peephole.

  It was a man. A stranger. About forty, bareheaded, he wore a three-piece suit, dark brown. The suit looked expensive. The man was staring straight at the door. As if he knew she was there, he lifted his chin, squared his shoulders—and waited, smiling slightly.

  She put the night chain in place, twisted the dead bolt, let the door come open on the chain.