Trick of Light

by Bayer-William

  I don't bother to protest that it wasn't luck, that I pulled Sanchez off his motorcycle, had him down and beat even before the fire. It's too complicated to explain how aikido works, and anyway, I doubt I can plausibly duplicate my moves. Better, I decide, to let the cops believe I was lucky, better to let the world believe it too. So long as drug dealers continue to operate on Capp, it'll be safer for me if they think their enforcer screwed up rather than suffered defeat at the hands of a woman.

  "Darlin'!"

  Dad bursts into the interview room, grasps me, hugs me hard.

  And then, abruptly, everything changes; Kremezi turns deferential. No more talk of my interfering with police business. His supervisor, Inspector Girardi, appears, compliments Dad on having such a coolheaded daughter. In fact, I don't feel cool at all. My sangfroid, so firm back in the alley, deserts me. Sitting beside Dad I suddenly get the shakes. No stylized encounter on the mat, my struggle with Sanchez was a dangerous, dirty street fight. Realizing how easily it could have gone the other way, I feel like a fool for having taken him on.

  Dad continues to hold my hand through the interview. Inspector Girardi agrees with him there's no reason to release my name.

  "I wouldn't hang around that neighborhood anymore if I were you, Ms. Farrow," Girardi warns. "There're vicious people there. If Sanchez dies, they may hold you responsible. Then they may seek revenge."

  Dad escorts me home. I like the way he lavishes attention upon me, don't mind that he treats me as if I'm fragile . . . which he knows perfectly well I'm not. But instead of putting me to bed, as he used to do when I was a kid, he pours himself a huge belt of Scotch, then sits in my living room gazing out at the night-city.

  "Grand old town, isn't it?" he says. "All those lights defining the hills. From up here you'd think it was paradise." He smiles. "Not like it really is, darlin'. Not like it really is."

  After three days Sanchez is still on the critical list, the odds still high against his survival. I feel no pity for him. Though a good defense lawyer might get him off on the hit-and-run, I've no doubt he's the man who ran down Maddy.

  Nights spent in my little spy nest at the Wongs' are finished; I know I won't be able to return there again. Which leaves the matter of what Maddy was doing watching apartment 5. Though I understand I cannot go back now to the Wongs', I've no intention of letting the matter rest.

  CHAPTER 3: THE CLUB

  Kremezi calls. Julio Sanchez is dead. After hanging on at the Cal-Med burn unit for eight days, he succumbed.

  "I interviewed him twice," Kremezi says. "He couldn't speak, so the way we did it I'd ask him a question, then he'd nod or shake his head."

  "What did he say?" I feel weak in my stomach.

  "Denied he had a fight with a woman. Said he was riding around the neighborhood, lost control, crashed against the wall, next thing found himself on fire. He also denied running down an old lady last month on Capp."

  "And you believed him?"

  "No, I didn't believe him. I'm just telling you what he said. Bottom line, Ms. Farrow, is he died a stand-up guy."

  Suddenly I'm furious. "Excuse me! Because he didn't own up to killing Maddy, or because he refused to snitch on his pals?"

  "Because he didn't say you pulled him off his machine."

  "Oh, I see—better to die silent than admit he lost a fight with a woman."

  "Don't get it, do you? No one'll be coming after you now. No one'll be out there looking for revenge. Thanks to his silence you're home free."

  Kremezi, I decide, has pretty strange values for a cop.

  "Of course I'm glad to be 'home free,'" I tell him, "but believe me, he killed Maddy, and he'd have tried to kill me again if he'd survived." I pause. "I expect now you'll be moving against the dealers."

  "We'll be looking into that."

  "Good. It's a forlorn neighborhood. I'd like to see it improved."

  I talk tough with him, but the moment I hang up, I start feeling bad. I go to my bedroom, curl up on my bed and bawl.

  It's not a lovely thing to be responsible for another's death. I know, of course, that I had no choice. It was Sanchez or me, and the fire was unforeseen. Still, according to the principles of aikido, one's goal should not be to hurt or retaliate, only to render one's attacker harmless. That was all I was trying to do.

  Still I'm haunted. Early in the afternoon, I go into the darkroom to examine the pictures I took that night, rescued from Maddy's shattered Pentax. I never bothered to print up the shots, just glanced quickly at the negatives, then set them aside. Now I set to work making portraits of the man for whose death I am responsible.

  Since I set the strobe on full in order to blind him, the film is greatly overexposed, but still there's sufficient image material to work with. Blinding him, of course, was my primary objective; taking his picture was a by-product. I didn't have to load the camera; I could have strobed him perfectly well on empty. But in the back of my mind was the notion that if I could also burn through his visor, I'd have a picture of Maddy's killer to turn over to the cops.

  The portrait that emerges is not pretty. Sanchez's face is as slovenly as I remember. His jaws are pitted and there's a deep crooked gouge on his cheek that could be a souvenir of a knife fight. His mouth is mean, his goatee is scraggly, his eyebrows grow together in an unattractive way. But it's his eyes that grab me, the look in them of surprise in the first two shots, shock in the third, outrage in the fourth. It's like watching a man as his sense of invulnerability is shattered, then seeing hatred emerge out of the shards.

  Joel calls to tell me he's no longer having headaches, that his mild concussion has healed. Now he's annoyed our Tan-Hing story didn't make much of an impression.

  "Reptiles, snakes—people see them and go 'Yuck!' Believe me, if it'd been macaws and cockatoos, the readers would've wept crocodile tears."

  He's also pissed at not hearing from his informant.

  "Maybe he dumped me because the story didn't play big. Or because he thinks I'm burned over getting bopped on the head."

  "He's not going to dump you, Joel. Who else has he got to use?"

  I meet Dad for lunch at the Ton Long, a dim sum restaurant near his bakery. They know him here, greet him warmly. One of the tray waitresses even flirts with him in a combination of giggles and elementary Cantonese.

  "Darlin', I'm losing it," he says, after she carries off her goodies to an adjacent table. "My Cantonese was never any good, but still I could jabber. It's been—what? Ten years since me and Rusty worked Chinatown? He, on the other hand, speaks better than ever."

  He starts reminiscing about his days on the Chinatown bunco squad, trying to distract me, I know, from thinking about Sanchez. It doesn't work and it shouldn't, since the purpose of our lunch is to help me deal with my pain over taking a life.

  "Okay," he says, finally meeting my eyes, "we know Sanchez was a slimeball killer, which makes dealing with what happened a little easier. But not that much easier, right?"

  "That's right, I agree."

  "But here's the thing, darlin'—you didn't do anything except pull him off his machine, and"—he winces—"break his wrist. The fire was an accident. Except not a total accident, because, way I hear it, most likely he brought it on himself."

  I stare at him. "What d'you mean?"

  "Something Rusty picked up down at the Hall. Seems Sanchez was carrying a firebomb, a Molotov cocktail-type deal. He was known for throwing firebombs at folks' houses. That's how he enforced silence in the neighborhood. What it looks like is when his motorcycle hit the wall, the bomb went off, then the fire spread back onto him. So what you got is a kind of poetic justice. The guy was hoisted on his own petard."

  Dad beams.

  "You know, down at the bakery I keep a big dictionary on my desk. Right before I walked over here I looked up that word 'petard.' Guess what? A petard was a kind of bomb that had a nasty habit of blowing up in its makers' faces. I also learned that it derives from the old French word for . . . I think t
he polite expression is 'breaking wind.'"

  We're chuckling over this when three tray waitresses converge upon us. Soon the five of us are giggling together. I point to a plate of seaweed. Dad goes for shrimp toast. After the waitresses move away, we laugh some more.

  "Feel a little better, darlin'?"

  "A whole lot," I tell him. "Thanks, Dad. No more guilt."

  Out on the sidewalk, as we're about to separate, he raises his finger.

  "Almost forgot—I finally remembered where I saw that name before. You know, Ramsey Carson, one of the three CFJ Realty Corp. guys who own that building. It had nothing to do with criminal activity. About a year ago there was a major gun auction at Butterfield and Butterfield. All sorts of historical stuff went for incredible prices. The big bidder, the collector who walked away with the best of the loot, was one Ramsey Carson, described in the Chronicle as a real estate investor. Gotta be the same guy, don't you think?"

  THE GUN / FIND THE GUN / WHERE'S THE GUN?

  Inside our magnificent Main Library, due to the profusion of glittering surfaces and blinding natural light, I'm forced to wear my darkest wraps. I finally find a monitor in a relatively dark corner on the third floor. A quick periodicals file search combining the name RAMSEY CARSON and the word GUN yields thirty-six citations.

  I read the articles on-screen. In the world of rare, historical and collectible guns, Mr. Carson, I discover, is a major player.

  At the auction Dad mentioned, he paid $260,000 for the revolver alleged to have been carried by General George Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

  At another auction, held at Sotheby's in London four years earlier, he bought an Arab long rifle previously owned by the explorer and Orientalist Sir Richard Burton for a record-shattering £180,000.

  But, I learn, Mr. Carson's acquisitions have not been confined to weapons associated with famous people. He's also a major collector of one-of-a-kind handmade British best guns, including the highest price ever paid for a pair of twentieth-century arms: $720,000 for matched Purdey sixteen-gauge over-and-under shotguns with special engravings by J. & B. Watson expressly executed for King Farouk of Egypt.

  Thirty of the thirty-six citations are to articles about precedent-setting gun auction prices, four are to articles concerning real estate transactions by the CFJ Realty Corporation, and one is to a list, in which Carson is included, of donors to the San Francisco Opera Association. But it's the last citation, in a society column, that intrigues me the most, a throwaway reference by Examiner gossip columnist Schuyler Lord, known for his nasty pen, to Mr. Carson's role as founder of the Goddess Gun Club in Mendocino County.

  When I click for full text, the library computer produces this:

  . . . much talk in highly knowledgeable circles these last nights about bizarre goings-on at the veddy exclusive, veddy tony Goddess Gun Club near Mendocino.

  The G.G.C., as it's familiarly called by those in the know, was set up ten years ago by millionaire gun collector J. RAMSEY CARSON and his longtime friend and CFJ Realty Corp. partner, CHAPLIN D. FONTAINE for, and I quote from club by-laws as filed with the State Attorney General's office, "recreation and good fellowship among shooters, hunters and firearms collectors, devoted to sport and the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms."

  All well and good, you may say, for who, except rabid members of the antigun crowd, would quarrel with such worthy objectives?

  But lately word has reached THIS DEPARTMENT that some G.G.C. activities may extend the meaning of "recreation" in ways unforeseen by certain distinguished charter members.

  There are rumors of contentious club meetings and furious resignations over what one source described as "activities unbecoming a true gentlemen's association."

  Be sure to watch THIS SPACE for further details as this delicious, pistol-whuppin' scandal continues to unfold . . .

  Fascinated, I make another search combining SCHUYLER LORD and G.G.C. Only one other item is produced, appearing in the Examiner three weeks after the first:

  . . . several weeks back THIS DEPARTMENT promised further revelations about certain "scandalous" goings-on at the veddy exclusive, veddy tony Goddess Gun Club in Mendocino County.

  Contrary to our earlier report, it appears that all is actually quite well at the venerable G. G. C., differences between members having been resolved in what a source describes as "a traditional gentleman manner."

  We're pleased that the troubles are now over in that hoity-toity gun lovers'paradise. Boys, of course, will always be boys, but boys with pistols can be . . . well, guntankerous . . . or so we hear!

  Interesting, I think, that in the first column Lord seems to salivate over the prospect of drawing blood, while a mere three weeks later, he appears eager to retract any implication that there's a scandal.

  Deciding to look further, I define a search for all references to the Goddess Gun Club. I'm rewarded with thirteen citations, most references to the club's acquisition of additional acreage (I note three expansions over the past ten years); a small item about the filing of a lawsuit by a neighbor over excessive noise issuing from G.G.C. property; an even smaller item about the settlement of said lawsuit; an item about the accidental fatal shooting of a vagrant who illegally wandered onto G.G.C. land; another fatal accidental shooting of a poacher; and finally, a year-old article that makes me sit up straight in my chair: a third fatal accidental shooting involving club cofounder Chaplin Fontaine, which took place between Schuyler Lord's two items about the G.G.C.

  I click on NEW SEARCH, then request articles on CHAPLIN D. FONTAINE. In his obituary in the Chronicle, I learn that Mr. Fontaine was found dead on the gun club firing range, victim of what the spokeswoman for the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department described as "a possible self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."

  Finding nothing further of interest concerning Ramsey Carson, Chaplin Fontaine or the Goddess Gun Club under its full name or acronym, I leave my computer station to search out a Mendocino County telephone book.

  I find it, along with all the directories for California, on a disheveled shelf in the open stacks. At a reading table, I look up the Goddess Gun Club. There's a telephone number but no address. I note the number, then turn to the domestic subscribers section, where I look up Vincent Carroll, the man whose name appears beside the buzzer for apartment 5 and to whose post office box address in Mendocino, Rusty informed me, PG&E bills for that apartment are sent. Again a phone number, this one with an address. I note both, then descend to the main lobby where, near the ladies' room, I find a public phone.

  Using my charge card, I dial Carroll's home number. After five rings a woman answers. She sounds harassed, as if maybe she's been out in the backyard hanging wash.

  "Vincent Carroll please."

  "Vince ain't here. Who's calling?"

  "This is Mary in Mr. Carson's office. Any idea where I can reach him, Mrs. Carroll?"

  "Number one, I ain't Mrs. Carroll. There ain't no Mrs. Carroll, not anymore. Number two, try him at the club, which is what you should've done in the first place. He oughta be there now . . . 'less, ha! ha! . . . he's out tomcattin' round the county." She hangs up.

  I dial the number for the Goddess Gun Club. A male voice answers on the first ring.

  "Vince Carroll please."

  "Certainly. Who should I tell him who's calling?"

  "Mary in Mr. Carson's office."

  "Right, Mary. He's out on the property. Give me a minute. I'll page him, then patch him through."

  I hang up. No need to speak to Carroll. I found out what I wanted to know. The people who use apartment 5 on alternate Wednesdays are very much involved with guns . . . which lends credence to my belief, which I'd begun to doubt, that I observed a gun used as a sex toy the night I saw action through the window from Maddy's spy nest at the Wongs'.

  Sasha, prince that he is, goes up to the Wongs' to collect Maddy's and my stuff, to explain, in sign, that I won't be coming back, and to leave two months' extra rent
to cushion their loss.

  When he returns, with Maddy's tripod, chemicals and sweater, he tells me that Grace Wong expressed sorrow. She'll miss me, she told him, just as she missed Maddy before.

  As to the accident and fire in front of their door, she and Mr. Wong slept through the entire thing, only learning of it the following morning. Grace expressed to Sasha her hope that my departure had nothing to do with lack of hospitality. Sasha assured her it was simply because my work in the attic room was done.

  I ask him if he's willing to drive me up to Mendocino on his next day off.

  "Sure," he says, "on condition we eat a good meal, bed down in a cozy inn, then make love till dawn."

  I phone Joel, ask if he knows the Examiner society columnist, Schuyler Lord.

  "Baggy? Sure, I know him."

  "People call him Baggy?"

  "His friends do. That is . . . if he has any friends."

  "Is he that malicious?"

  "Venomous," Joel says. "Totally toxic."

  He agrees to call Lord on my behalf. Ten minutes later he phones back.

  "You're on, kiddo. Seven P.M., his place, for a drink. Be prepared to flatter him, but be subtle—he claims he can see through flatterers. I also suggest you wear your thickest suit of emotional armor, and if you want something from him be prepared to trade items in return."

  "Sounds charming. Any other advice?"

  "Yeah. If he tries to slap you down, smack him back in the puss. He claims to adore women—really he fears and loathes them. You'll never make him like you, kiddo, but if you handle him right you'll get his attention and respect."

  The apartment building on Nob Hill, constructed early in the century in high Art Nouveau style, strikes me as appropriate for a society gossip—with its flamboyant facade of balconies and bays that billow out like the fronts of bombe commodes. My footsteps echo as I cross the marble-lined vestibule, then ascend the curving marble staircase.