Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes

by Marcia Muller

  Wingfield raised her eyebrows. “Cordy? God, no! Her flirtations were strictly sexual.”

  “What about Melissa Cardinal? Did you ever talk politics with her?”

  “No. My relations with the other girls in the flat were fairly superficial. And then there was Vincent. When you’re closeted in a bedroom with the man you think you love, you’re not likely to pay much attention to a roommate’s preferences at the polls.”

  Her frankness about Benedict was an abrupt switch from her previous resentment at my intrusion into her privacy. Acceptance of the truth coming out, I wondered, or more candor calculated to confuse? “Did you ever meet Melissa’s stepbrother, Roger Woods?”

  “I didn’t even know she had a stepbrother.”

  “And you don’t remember anything further about where Cordy and Melissa met?”

  She shook her head, exhaling smoke through her nostrils. “I’ve done some thinking on that, and I have the distinct impression that Cordy didn’t really know Melissa well, either. They seemed to have friends in common, though; one time I remember them reminiscing about something ridiculous that had happened at the Unspeakable.”

  “Where?”

  “Coffeehouse on Filbert. It’s long gone.”

  “A Beat place?”

  “No, this was a little early for them. More of a Socialist hangout.”

  “Maybe that’s the connection I’m looking for. Do you know who ran it? Or anyway I can find out more about it?”

  “The only time I was there was one weekend when I came up from Stanford and had a date with a fellow who fancied himself a radical. We didn’t stay long; he’d had too much to drink, got loud, and they asked us to leave.”

  “I don’t suppose he was a regular, then.”

  “He may have been; at least he’d been there before. I can ask him what he remembers about the place.”

  “You’re still in touch?

  “God, yes. His mother was my mother’s bridge partner. Once he got over his radical phase, he went into his father’s brokerage firm and made millions. I regularly approach him for contributions.”

  “Would you mind calling him and asking about the Unspeakable?”

  “Will do.”

  An argument had been in progress in the next cubicle for some time now. Suddenly it escalated. Spanish epithets peppering the air. Wingfield glanced that way, said, “I think I’m needed.”

  “I’ll hope to hear form you about the Unspeakable, then. And see you at the mock trial.”

  Her lips twisted ruefully. “And I hope this trial doesn’t make a complete mockery of us all.”

  Back at my office, I checked in with Cathy Potter. She had a few interesting things to tell me about the Seacliff property: the asking price was five-point-five million, pre-qualifying territory, but the Institute for North American Studies no longer owned it. The new owner was a firm called Keyes Development.

  “And have I got the skinny on that!” she added. “Seems the Institute mortgaged it to the max to finance the new facility. During the last year, they got behind on their payments to the lender, plus they owed millions to Keyes, which put together the Embarcadero deal. So Keyes took over the property in lieu of payment, and now they own a piece of primo oceanfront real estate, even if most of it is practially vertical.”

  “What about getting access?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “When will you know?”

  “Like I said, I’m working.”

  “Call me back when you know something. If you get me in there, I promise to buy my next house through you.”

  Cathy, who had been privy to the complicated and peculiar financial finaglings that had gotten me my present house merely snorted and hung up.

  I hung up too, and contemplated the handful of message slips I’d carried upstairs with me. Two clients, requesting minor things. Another client, thanking me for a job well done. My mother: my answering machine had screeched at her when she’d called my home yesterday, and she feared it was malfunctioning. Would I call her when I had the time?

  I would. Since Ma had divorced my father the previous fall and moved in with her new love, a younger man—fifty seven—named Melvin Hunt, our conversations had become increasingly upbeat and enjoyable. So had my dealings with my father, who every day emerged further from a decades-long shell of depression and isolation. With both of them, I’d been forced to create a new relationship—one where criticizing and guilt-tripping and resentment of parental authority had no place. It was wonderful to have found two new friends in my own parents.

  There was one final message: “Linda wants you to call her at Wig Wonderland.” Beneath the words, Ted had drawn a big exclamation point and a face that looked remarkably like mine, topped by carrot-colored curls.

  Linda? Wig Wonderland? Oh, right—Tony Nueva’s woman friend, Linda Bautista. She’d said she’d let me now if she heard from him.

  I decided to go over there rather than call.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Linda Bautista wore an auburn wig today, its glistening tresses woven and piled so high that it looked as if she had a leafless pineapple balanced on her head. She was fitting a mop of platinum curls on a young Asian women when I entered the store; the effect was ghastly, but the woman turned her head from side to side, smiling. When she saw me, Linda put a finger to her lips and motioned at a curtained archway at the rear of the room. I nodded and went back there; after a few seconds she followed.

  The archway opened into a stock room. More disembodied heads sat on the shelves, and wigs lay curled up in their plastic boxes like sleeping animals. Linda leaned against the wall, took off one of her bright red pumps, and wriggled her stockinged toes. “Tony’s back,” she said. “He wants to see you.”

  “Where is he—your place?”

  She shook her head. “He’s hiding at a friend’s out by the beach.”

  “Who’s he hiding from? The person who beat him?”

  “Yes and no. It’s sorta . . . complicated.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Well . . .” Her gaze slid away from mine, and she leaned down to pick up her shoe. “Tony was in Chula Vista, and him and his cousins, they went over to Tijuana. Coming back, there was some trouble with Customs, so he took off.”

  “What kind of trouble? Drugs?”

  “Um, I’m not sure. But he didn’t feel good about staying down south.”

  For some time now I’d been expecting Nueva to make a serious mistake; he wasn’t bright enough to balance indefinitely on the thin edge of legality. “So he came back here, where he knows someone has it in for him.”

  Linda fiddled with the shoe, pulling out its crumpled, dirty innersole. “Where else was he gonna go? Here at least he’s got friends. Will you go see him?”

  “What’s the address?”

  She gave it to me, on Forty-seventh Avenue near Santiago. As she slipped her pump back on, I asked, “Does this mean you and Tony are back together?”

  She shrugged, still avoiding my eyes. “What else can I do? He needs me.” Unspoken was the corollary: And I need him.

  I wanted to tell her that she had more options than a semi-slick operator who at nineteen had already begun his downward slide to prison. But I wasn’t sure that was true, and she didn’t want to hear it anyway, so I said nothing. As I left the shop, the Asian woman was asking to see a wig exactly like Linda’s.

  The outer reaches of the Sunset district look much like the beach communities of southern California, but everywhere are reminders that the elements impinge more harshly here. Salt-laden moisture and heavy rain corrode the iron railings of the apartment complexes near the Great Highway; wind-driven sand scours the paint and pits the stucco of the small homes sandwiched between them. Even on a sun-drenched day, a vague aura of depression hovers over the area, as the fogbank hovers over the sea; on one like this, when grayness had a grip on the entire city, the shabbiness and outright decay seem cruelly exposed.

  The
address Linda had given me was the ground-floor in-law apartment of a pink stucco house. I rang the bell, salt mist dampening my cheeks as I waited. Footsteps crept up to the door; I looked through its peephole and saw a dark eye looking back at me. Then the security chain rattled, and Tony Nueva let me in. Quickly he replaced the chain and turned the dead bolt.

  We were in a dark narrow hallway whose floor was covered wit a patchwork of different colors and types of carpet. Some overlapped, creating a lumpy surface. All smelled strongly of mildew and more faintly of dog. Tony didn’t speak, merely let me to a room furnished with only a mattress and one of those beanbag chairs that were popular in the sixties. There was no kitchen, only a hot plate on top of a small refrigerator; through the bathroom door I could see dishes stacked in the sink. Nueva motioned me to take the chair and flopped on the mattress.

  The draperies on the single window were safety-pinned shut. The light that filtered around them revealed Tony to be uncharacteristically rumpled. His dark hair stood up in ragged points, his eyes were circled and bloodshot, and he reeked of beer. A pyramid of Budweiser cans leaned against one wall.

  “So,” I said, “you went and did it this time. What happened at the border? Were you smuggling dope?”

  He gestured wearily. “No lectures, McCone. I been beating myself up pretty good without your help.”

  “Who else beat you up?” I could see the marks on his face: cuts that had scabbed over bruises turning ocher.

  “Before I tell you about it, I’m gonna need a stake to get out of town.”

  “I may be able to help you with that, but first I’ll have to hear what you have to say.”

  “Shit, McCone—”

  “Do you want me to help you or not?”

  He glared at me, then sighed. “Okay. That Friday two weeks ago when you came around to the arcade about the graffiti? You were right about it being easy to spot the punk on account of his red hands. Name’s Enrique Chavez. Big dude, kind of ugly, pretty stupid, too. He’d been bragging to the guys at this bike shop where he hangs out about how he’s got this contract from somebody big and is gonna be rolling in it.”

  Neuva looked around, picked up a beer can, and shook it. Then he tipped back his head and sucked at the dregs. “So I go see Chavez,” he went on. “I figure if whoever’s hired him is big, I can make a deal. I talk to him, tell him you’re looking into the graffiti. He says to cool it, don’t tell you nothin’, he’ll find out what it’s worth. Next day he shows up with five big ones.”

  “Then what?”

  “I keep listening. Chavez’s really stupid; he’s got a mouth on him. I find out there’s more graffiti. Phone calls. And then I hear about the old lady.”

  “What about her?”

  “Just a name. Benedict.” Nueva nodded, pointed emphatically at me. “One day I hear Chavez’s talking about her. Next day she’s dead. Now I know I’m on to something.”

  Obviously he hadn’t seen the piece in the morning paper, had no idea Lis Benedict had killed herself. “So you approached Chavez again,” I said.

  “Not right off. I think it through for a couple of days. Work it all out in my head. Then I go see Chavez at the bike shop. Big mistake. Chavez gives the signal to a couple of his pals, and they all three lay into me. Those guys—killers. No way am I gonna make it in this town anymore, so I take off down south. And if it wasn’t for my fuckin’ cousin Carlos talking me into helping him move a couple of kilos across the border, I’d still be there.”

  I was silent, thinking over what he’d told me. As I’d said to Adah Joslyn, even though Lis Benedict had committed suicide, she’d literally been hounded to death. I wanted this Enrique Chavez—and I wanted the person who had hired him. “You know where Chavez lives?” I asked.

  Nueva shook his head. “Like I said, he hangs out at Ace Bike Works on Seventh near Folsom. But don’t go there, McCone. Those guys’ll make dog meat of you.”

  “Just worry about yourself, Nueva.”

  “I am. Why’d you think I told you all that? How much’re you gonna give me for it?”

  “The twenty dollars we originally agreed to for this information.”

  “McCone!” A wail of pure outrage.

  “You went back on the deal, Tony. You wouldn’t even have returned my ten buck advance if I hadn’t hunted you down and accused you of selling out.”

  “McCone, I gotta get out of town. Chavez finds out I told you, him and his pals’ll kill me for sure.”

  “I doubt that; Chavez doesn’t know where you are. And I’m not gonna tell him, because I want you to stay right here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I may need you, and if I do, I’ll pay you well.”

  Nueva smiled. Even with a drug-smuggling charge hanging over his head, the prospect of dealing could perk him right up.

  Ace Bike Works wasn’t much, just a garage beneath one of the dilapidated Victorians on Seventh Street in the heart of the Mission. It wasn’t doing much business, either. When I pulled up across the driveway at ten to five, I saw only one man inside—a bullet-headed Latino in coveralls, sweeping the floor and allowing the detritus to blow into the street. He glanced un-curiously at me as I got out of the MG, then looked back at his broom.

  As I approached him, I checked out the garage. Definitely no one else there, and only one cycle—an old Harley-Davidson that looked as if it hadn’t been street-worthy in years. The man stopped sweeping, leaned on the broom, and regarded me with dull eyes.

  “Enrique around?”

  No reaction.

  “Enrique Chavez?”

  It was as if a relay switch had kicked in. The eyes cleared—infinitesimally. “Enrique?” he asked, and I realized he was retarded.

  “Enrique Chavez,” I said more slowly.

  “Not here.”

  “You know where he lives?”

  Again, no reaction.

  “His house? The address?”

  “Clipper Street.”

  “The number?”

  Headshake.

  “The cross street?”

  “Sanchez?”

  “Thank you.”

  The man said nothing more, merely began to sweep again.

  The directory in a phone kiosk near the Sixteenth Street BART station showed only three Chavezes on the blocks of Clipper near Sanchez, and only one named Enrique. I drove, rumbling through potholes, to the listed address.

  Clipper is the city’s main artery over the hill from the West of Twin Peaks area to the Mission and points east, including the Bay Bridge. I’ve long suspected that the residents discourage our famed Pothole Patrol form paying too many visits in hope of cutting down on traffic. Chavez’s block was one of the worst, and my spine tingled unpleasantly by the time I stopped across from his Victorian cottage. Its paint had peeled away long ago; only splintered wood remained, and if something wasn’t done soon, the venerable structure would be good for nothing but kindling.

  I went up to the house, range the bell. No one home. As I turned away, I spotted a neighbor picking up the evening paper from her front steps and called out, “Does Enrique Chavez live here?”

  “Father or son?”

  “Son.”

  “Yeah, he’s still there. The old man took off with a bimbo six months ago.”

  “Thanks.” I went back to my MG to wait.

  An hour passed. The fog spread farther inland, slipping over the hills behind me and riding along their contours. Lights came on in the nearby houses: even though it was daylight saving time, we’d have an early evening. The Chavez house stayed dark.

  I stared through the mist dotting my windshield. The house was set in a small hollow, and the fog lay strangely still there, as it had at Seacliff the night Wingfield and I made our pilgrimage. As it might have on the night Cordy McKittridge had died . . .

  I didn’t want to think about that night. I pushed the images aside. They came on steadily in spite of my efforts. I said aloud, “God, what’s wrong with you?”
r />   I hadn’t slept well in days, but by now my weariness felt like an intrinsic part of me, something I thought about no more than the blood coursing through my veins and arteries. Deep down, I was furious with myself for having become so involved—no, face it, obsessed—with long-ago events that I could neither prevent nor change. Furious, too, with present-day events that told me the past was not ad dead as I’d like it to be. But my rage was curiously blunted; on the raw-nerve level where I was operating. I felt beyond it all, simply too tired to expend my energies on nonproductive emotion.

  Full dark now, and still no one home at the Chavez house. Too much to do this evening to wait it out. I drove over to Bell Market on Twenty-fourth Street and used the pay phone to check in with All Souls.

  Ted answered, still on duty at twenty to seven. “Louise Wingfield called,” he said. “The former owner of the Unspeakable is Jed Mooney. There’s a number where you can reach him.” He read it off, then asked, “What is that—one of those rock groups that puke on stage?”

  “Just a defunct coffeehouse. Anything else?”

  “No. Jack is upstairs, in conference with Judy. He said if you checked in, I should tell you to come by here at eight for a strategy session.”

  “Tell him, I’ll try.”

  I hung up and placed a call to Jed Mooney. He said he’d be happy to talk with me about “the last good decade,” and gave me an address on Thirty-first Avenue in the Outer Richmond.

  On the way back to my car, I wondered what kind of person would refer to the tacky, conformist fifties in such a manner.

  A leftover member of the Beat Generation—that’s what kind of person. I knew plenty of die-hard hippie; they were everywhere, living in throwback communes in the hills or going about perfectly ordinary pursuits, like my mailman. But I’d never before met a leftover Beat.

  Jed Mooney was in his sixties, tall, very thin, and wearing the uniform of another day: black jeans, black sweater, goatee, and crew cut. From outside, his stucco house looked the same as the others on the block, but its interior resembled what I imagined his coffeehouse had been like. The living room walls were plastered with blown-up photographs of Ginsberg and Kerouac and Ferlinghetti; a folk singer with an odd nasal voice droned on the stereo. Mooney had lit a candle in a wax-encrusted Chianti bottle against the encroaching dark. He invited me to pull up a cushion to a low table and sat opposite me, hands clasped on its teakwood surface. “You said you want to talk about the Unspeakable.”