Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

by Marcia Muller

  So what did this mean? Had Suitcase Gordon become a legitimate businessman? Or had he simply perfected one of his many scams?

  I reviewed his unaltered mannerisms and appearance. Discounted the expensive suit, briefcase, and Rolex. Decided he couldn’t possibly be legitimate. No legitimate person would act that furtive.

  * * *

  I pocketed Suits’s card and went upstairs. The phone-company woman was still installing, the new furniture hadn’t yet arrived, and my nephew, Mick Savage, lay flat on his stomach on my office floor doing something to one of the electrical sockets. He looked over his shoulder when he heard me come in and grimaced.

  “Wiring must’ve been put in about the time Noah’s Ark sailed,” he complained.

  I eyed him nervously. “Did you shut off the power?”

  “Do I look like an idiot?”

  “I won’t answer that.” In truth, my sister Charlene’s eldest could look vacuous upon occasion, but I took that to be typical of many seventeen-year-olds and assumed he’d outgrow it. He was a big kid: sandy blond like his mother; stocky like his father, country-music star Ricky Savage; and he had the same easy, outgoing disposition as both his parents.

  Mick had been sent from Pacific Palisades to San Francisco for the month because I needed someone to teach me how to use my computer. In that department my nephew was a genius—had, in fact, been suspended from school during his senior year for getting into the board of education’s mainframe and selling teachers’ confidential evaluations of students to the highest bidders. The night before she put him on the northbound plane, Charlene had confided over the phone that she was worried about her son: first there’d been the time he ran away to San Francisco at the holidays and I’d had to spend my Christmas Eve scouring the city for him; then there was the business of him changing his preferred version of his given name six times in the past three years; and, of course, there was the disgraceful hacker episode. Since graduation, Charlene said, Mick had been drifting and directionless; he refused to discuss his future plans. Perhaps I could counsel him while he was with me? At least persuade him to give college a try? I said I’d see what I could do.

  Unfortunately, Charlene and Ricky were going to be very unhappy with the results of Mick’s visit.

  I went over to my desk and picked up my mail. Nothing but bills and a large manila envelope. I slit it open and pulled out a thick booklet: “P.I. & Security Mail-Order Catalog, The One-Stop Shopping Source for Your Investigation Business.” On the front was a silhouette of a guy in a trench coat; the note attached to it began, “Dear Mr. Savage, Thank you for your interest …”

  I looked at the address label on the envelope, realized I’d mistakenly opened Mick’s mail, and sighed.

  During the past couple of weeks, Mick had made up his mind he wanted to become a private investigator. Why, of all possible professions, he’d chosen mine remained unclear to me, particularly since he hadn’t seen me do any actual investigating since he’d been here. But he’d decided, and if I couldn’t defuse the idea, I was definitely going to be on my sister’s blacklist.

  First I’d pointed out that he was too young to be licensed. He’d said he would stay on and work for me, learning the trade until he was of age. Then I told him I couldn’t afford to pay both him and the assistant I planned to hire. He said he’d accept room and board at my house in lieu of a salary. I insisted that I liked living alone. He said I wouldn’t even know he was there. I declared the plan unworkable. He pouted. Since our latest discussion he’d become silent and secretive, but I gathered his studies were moving forward: yesterday I’d found several volumes—including Advanced Lock Picking and Getaway: Driving Techniques for Escape and Evasion—hidden under the guest room bed. Given Mick’s past interest in extralegal activity, those two titles made me distinctly uneasy.

  Yes, Charlene and Ricky were going to be extremely unhappy with Aunt Sharon’s effect on their son. In fact, if Mick persisted in this plan, my sister would kill me.

  Mick finished with the socket and stood up, dusting off the front of his jeans and work shirt. He saw the catalog in my hands and started guiltily.

  “So what’re you going to order from this one?” I asked, paging through the offerings. “The Hacker’s Handbook? Money for Nothing: Rip-Offs, Cons, and Swindles? Or how about Counterfeit ID Made Easy?”

  “You opened my mail.”

  “In error.” I handed the catalog to him.

  He pushed out his lips in a fair imitation of a bulldog. “Yeah, sure, in error. You’re in such an uproar about me wanting to become a P.I. that you’ve probably tapped the phone.”

  “Mick—”

  “I don’t see what’s the big deal about it.”

  “I’ve told you, it’s a tough business. Tough to break into, too.”

  “Well, yeah, maybe for you, being a woman way back then.”

  Way back during the Dark Ages. God, there were times when Mick could make me feel old! “That’s right. But the training—for anybody, even now—is less than thrilling. You work as a security guard the way I did before and during college and hope management’ll pick you out of the rank and file, or you sit in a cubicle running endless computer traces, or you go out on auto repos—”

  “So? You stuck with it and got your license.”

  “Only because I couldn’t find any other job after getting a B.A. in sociology. Only because I got lucky and ended up with a boss who was willing to train and promote me.”

  “Well, I got lucky when Mom and Dad sent me up here to help you.”

  “It’s not the same, Michael.”

  “Mick.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why isn’t it the same?”

  “Because …” I hunted for an explanation. “Because you have advantages and prospects that I didn’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like wealthy parents who are willing to pay your way through college.” There, Charlene, I though, I’ve talked to him about higher education.

  Mick rolled his eyes. “Don’t start, Aunt Shar.”

  The title “aunt” was one of the things that made me feel old. I figured if he could change his name all those times and expect me to remember which was current, I could insist he break himself of a lifelong habit. “Sharon or Shar,” I said firmly. “Forget the ‘aunt.’”

  He frowned. “Uh, okay.”

  From outside I heard the rumble of a truck’s engine. I went to the window, looked down, and saw the van from Breuner’s. “The furniture’s here,” I told him, glad for the interruption. “You want to go down and direct them?”

  He went to the door, the one-stop shopping source clutched protectively in both hands. “You know,” he said, “if you don’t want me working for you, I’ll have to go for it on my own. I have a plan.”

  “What plan?”

  He shook his head, grinned evilly at me, and disappeared around the doorjamb. I sighed in resignation.

  Oh, yes, my sister was going to kill me.

  Two

  During the 1840s Gold Rush, San Francisco’s South Beach was called Happy Valley, and to this day the name applies. Of course, only ghosts of the newly rich miners and their fancy ladies remain; gone too are most of the sailors and longshoremen who used to work the waterfront there; many light industrial firms fled the high rents in the early 1980s. But now the abandoned warehouses and factories are making way for luxurious residential complexes; the crumbling old piers are being reclaimed for non-maritime use; there’s a new marina, and an upscale restaurant seems to open every week. Even the big quake of 1989 did South Beach a favor by damaging the unsightly Embarcadero Freeway to its north; when the structure was finally razed, the long-forgotten bay views stunned us all. There’s an abundance of attractions in this present-day Happy Valley.

  So which of them, I wondered, had drawn Suitcase Gordon?

  His condominium complex, Bay Vista, was eight stories of dark red brick whose style reprised that of the nineteenth century. A sig
n advertising that units were still available boasted of individual terraces facing the waterfront, a health club, two pools, tennis courts, a deli, a grocery store, concierge services, sheltered parking, and a twenty-four-hour doorman. Unfortunately, it was impossible to approach the complex from the Embarcadero because of a thirty-foot-wide open trench where the roadbed was being expanded. I had to go around the block and park behind the building, then cross a vacant lot full of rubble and idle earthmoving equipment.

  A doorman was on duty as advertised, but he acted surly until I asked for Mr. Gordon; then he became respectful to the point of fawning. A high-speed elevator—semiprivate, serving only two units—took me to the top floor, where Suits waited impatiently in his doorway. He hustled me inside through a spacious foyer to an enormous room with a glass wall overlooking the terrace. At one end was a marble fireplace, at the other a mirrored wet bar; and in the exact center of the pegged hardwood floor, on an Indian rug that looked as though it had been bought at Cost Plus, stood a cluttered card table and two folding chairs. Three steel file cabinets and a stand holding a phone and fax machine were lined up along the wall perpendicular to the bar. And that was it.

  “Nice furnishings,” I said.

  Suits frowned, then shrugged. “I meant to buy some, but I never got around to it.”

  “And you’ve lived here how long?”

  “A year?”

  “A year.”

  “What can I say? I’ve been busy.”

  “Obviously. But why have a place like this if you’re just going to crash here the way you used to in the old days at our house on Durant?”

  “Well, I like the dry-cleaning and maid services. And there’s a heliport on the roof. But … come on.” He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me to the terrace. “The view’s the real attraction. It’s what I need to keep my vision intact.”

  I was about to ask what he meant by that when a great rumble came from below. Seizing the opportunity to escape his unwanted touch, I went to the terrace wall and looked down. A scoop loader was creeping along the trench, belching nasty black exhaust.

  Suits came up beside me and said something.

  “What?”

  He scowled down at the scoop loader, then motioned for me to precede him inside and banged the door shut behind us.

  “I just wish they’d get the goddamn road built and go away,” he muttered. “Between the noise and the fumes and those fuckin’ beepers that sound off when they back up, I’m going nuts. Guy who invented those beepers ought to be shot.”

  “How long’s that been going on down there?”

  “Too long. Look, let’s get out of here, go grab a cup of coffee. Then we can talk.”

  I was just as glad to do that, so I waited while he changed into a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes. In them he looked more like the Suits of college days. As the elevator took us down to the lobby, I asked, “Suits, what exactly is it that you do for a living?”

  He shook his head, glancing around suspiciously.

  Good God, did he think the elevator was bugged? I shrugged and followed him outside, past the still-fawning doorman. Suits skirted the trench, casting a hostile look at an idle workman, then darted across the pockmarked pavement of the Embarcadero, eluding oncoming cars with the nimble-footed skill of a toreador. I waited till traffic cleared before joining him.

  “Do you perhaps have a death wish?” I asked.

  He didn’t reply, merely cut a diagonal course past the Boondocks restaurant and Red’s Java House and struck out southward. I hurried along in his wake, caught up, and tugged at the hood of his sweatshirt. “Where’re we going?”

  He pulled away and kept on in his curious scuttling gait—working off his irritation with the construction project, I guessed. A fair distance along the waterfront, past the new marina and a few closed-up piers, sat another small eatery, Miranda’s. Suits headed for the squat gray clapboard building and held its door open for me. Inside it was your standard longshoremen’s diner: no tricking up for the tourists, no pseudo-nautical frills, just a lunch counter with a grill and coffee urns behind it and yellow leatherette booths beneath the windows. I slipped into the one Suits indicated, and he asked, “What’ll you have?”

  “Coffee, please. Black.”

  “Nothing to eat?”

  “No, thanks, just coffee.”

  He shrugged and went over to the counter. The cook, a heavyset bald man in a stained white apron, apparently knew him, because he nodded in brusque friendliness and called him T.J. Suits gave his order and sat down on a stool to wait for it.

  I looked away, out the grimy salt-caked window. It afforded a view all the way from the Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena Island to the drawbridge at China Basin. A gray view today, typical weather for August, although unusually dour for this area, which enjoyed one of the better climates in a city of many climate zones. I watched a flock of gulls plane north above the water, then pinwheel off in various directions. Farther out, a container ship moved slowly toward the Port of Oakland.

  Suits returned in a few minutes carrying two mugs of coffee, then went back for a plate containing half a dozen little hamburgers. Before I finished stirring my coffee to cool it, he’d wolfed down three of them. I’d forgotten that for a skinny guy, Suits could consume enormous quantities of food.

  “All right,” I said after taking a sip of what turned out to be a particularly nasty brew, “now are you ready to tell me what this is about?”

  He swabbed his mouth with a paper napkin. “Do you know what a turnaround man is?”

  “One of those people who bring corporations back from the edge of bankruptcy?”

  “That’s it. And that’s me. When they get down and desperate, I rescue ’em.”

  While he ate the rest of his burgers I remained silent, recalling an article I’d noticed in an old copy of Fortune that had been the only thing to read in my dentist’s waiting room a few months back. It was titled “Turnaround Pros Sweep the Compensation Ratings,” and the lead paragraphs—which were all I’d gotten through before being summoned to the drill—described the turnaround men as a breed apart, white knights riding into battle in private jets and limousines. The image did not fit the Suitcase Gordon I’d known, and the requisite skills were none he’d ever demonstrated.

  “How’d you get into that line of work?” I asked.

  He shook his head—an abrupt reflexive dismissal of my question. It reminded me of the way the savings-and-loan boys told reporters “No comment” when the indictments came down. “Just fell into it by accident,” he finally said.

  I hesitated, wondering if I should press for a better explanation. No, I decided, the set of his mouth indicated I wouldn’t get one. Come to think of it, in all the time I’d known him, Suits had imparted very little personal information. He was a tireless talker, but his conversational repertoire consisted of inconsequential chatter, aimless bullshit, and largely apocryphal stories. I had not the slightest idea of where he’d been born, grown up, or attended school; I knew his full name only because I’d once glimpsed his Massachusetts driver’s license when he wrote a check—which later bounced—at Berkeley’s Co-op Market.

  I said, “Tell me more about what you do.”

  Suits balled up his napkin, tossed it onto the plate, and belched discreetly. “Okay, here’s how it works. Say you’ve got a company that’s about to go down the tubes. They owe millions, their creditors’re hounding them. The atmosphere’s bad: employees’re stampeding out the door, management’s pissed off at the board, the board’s lost all confidence in management. Chapter Eleven’s looming on the horizon, and the stockholders’re dumping their shares. What does the board do?”

  I raised my eyebrows inquiringly.

  “They make a last-ditch stand, send for a troubleshooter. A man who can turn things around.” He jerked his thumb at his chest. “Me.”

  I reached into my bag and took out my minicassette recorder. Might as well have the conversation on
tape, in case I decided to take him on as a client. “Do you mind?” I asked.

  He shook his head, waved it away. “Nothing I say goes on somebody else’s tape. Nothing.”

  I shrugged, put the recorder away. “Go on.”

  “Okay, the turnaround man—me—comes on board. There aren’t all that many of us—maybe nine, ten, tops, in the country—who’re first-rate. The board pays maximum dollar, maximum options and non-cash perks to get me. They agree to let me call all the shots. I’m a dictator with a license to kill—and that’s exactly what I do. The first step is the bloodbath.”

  Interesting how Suits, who had always claimed to embrace the values of peace and love, described his profession with such violent metaphors.

  “Okay,” he went on, “here’s how it goes down. You find a sacrificial lamb. Doesn’t have to be the guy responsible for what’s wrong, just has to be somebody with high visibility. You find him and you crucify him. Bang! He’s gone. You’ve shown everybody how ruthless you are, and people’re nervous now. Hell, you do it right, you’ve got them running to the can seventeen times a day.”

  “Nice.”

  “Hey, it has to be done.”

  “You’ve changed, Suits.”

  His eyes met mine, level and candid. “Haven’t we all, Sherry-O?” he said mildly.

  I acknowledged the implication with a rueful grimace.

  “Okay, the bloodbath’s over, for the most part. Next you bring in your own people. I’ve got a permanent staff in my L.A. office, but they’re just administrative. For my on-site people I draw on a talent pool from all over the country: a finance guy in Chicago; a marketing guy in Dallas; a statistician in L.A.; an operations guy in Atlanta. These people come in. They’ve got high visibility, they’ve got authority. And they show they know how to kick butt.

  “Now’s the time when you clear out more deadwood. You clean things up, trim things back. You make your deals with the moneymen—the banks and investors. You make your deals with the creditors. People’ll cut you any amount of slack if they think they’ve got a chance of getting their money back. So basically what you do is get things stabilized. That can take about a year.”