"If there's proof Carson shot your husband," I tell her, "he'd do better owning up to a duel than facing a murder charge."
"What about Chap? Takes two to fight a duel."
"He's already paid for his part in it, hasn't he?"
She nods. "Then there's the disgrace."
"Really, Agnes, I don't see any disgrace in what Chap did. Just the opposite. He faced off against a man who betrayed his trust and who was by far the better marksman. It's Carson who'll be disgraced for shooting down his benefactor, then behaving like a hypocrite at his funeral."
"You're right!" There's a snap to her voice now. "What we need is proof! There ought to be a way to get it. Turn a witness. Isn't that what they do?" She pauses in front of the de Kooning. "You said that if there was a duel, all the witnesses are implicated."
"Because they were parties to a crime, and later made false statements to the cops."
Her eyes turn electric. I detect the glow of one who, having believed she's lost a game, now sniffs the possibility of reversal.
"Ram's the one to get. Orrin too. He's no weakling and he let Chap down. Petersen? He's a drunk. Then there's Stadpole and Kistler—who may have acted as seconds. My guess is Kirk acted for Chap, Jack for Ram. I wouldn't want to hurt Kirk, especially since Chap trusted him. Also I know Kirk would never have taken part in any of those . . . affairs Ram organized. But Jack would. He's just like Ram, a rake! Which leaves that local man, Vince what's-his-name. I don't know him at all."
I don't say anything, let her talk on. I find it thrilling to watch her. An hour ago she was in despair. Now she's thinking of how she can claim some justice.
"Between Petersen and Stadpole . . . Petersen would be the weakling. The local man too. He has a lot to lose. Say Petersen broke and then maybe this Vince fellow—that would be two witnesses corroborating each other's stories. If Kirk joined in, it would be three against three. Ram, Orrin and Jack would be finished then, wouldn't they?"
She clamps her jaws as if savoring their defeat.
"What I need is an honest investigator—preferably from out of town. Maybe from down in L.A. where they're not impressed by San Francisco money. A good tough lawyer too, to file a wrongful death suit. Someone not afraid of Raid Harris. A street-fighter type from Oakland who didn't go to fancy schools, or someone Ram cheated, or whose wife Ram screwed. There should be plenty of those."
Suddenly she stops, covers her mouth with her hand.
"What am I saying?" She slumps beside me on the couch. "This isn't me talking. It's someone else." She stares at me. "I feel . . . I'm going mad."
Trying to comfort her, I suggest she take time to think things through.
"It's a big step to go against people who were your friends."
She shakes her head. "They were never my friends. They were Chap's . . . and he was wrong about them, every single one." She looks at me. "Tell me, Kay, what's your interest in this?"
I tell her about Maddy, her spy nest opposite the G.G.C. apartment, then the way she was killed and my suspicions that the G.G.C. I may have been behind it.
"She was a photojournalist. It was her last story. I'd like to finish it for her if I can." I shake my head. "My boyfriend and I went up to Mendocino last weekend to scope things out. From what we saw, it's not only very difficult but extremely dangerous to try and enter G.G.C. grounds."
Agnes peers at me. Our dialogue seems to have run out of steam. I glance at my watch. It's nearly nine P.M.
"I'm sorry, I've kept you so long," she says. "You've been patient with me and now I'm embarrassed." She peers at me again. "Even though we've just met, I feel as though I know you. Perhaps it's your photographs. I saw power and truth in them. I trust artists, always have. Please excuse me a moment. There's something I want to get for you before you leave."
When she reappears she's holding an accordion file.
"This is Chap's G.G.C. stuff," she tells me, "keys, property maps, building plans, everything he had pertaining to the club. Maybe, if you decide to go there, some of this will be of use. Keep it as long as you like. Neither of my sons wants it. They have no interest in the club, even though, as sons of a founder, they're members for life."
I thank her. She escorts me to the foyer, embraces me when the elevator arrives. As the doors start to close between us, I catch a glimpse of tears forming in her eyes.
Another doorman takes me down. Sam, he tells me, went off duty at six. Out on Vallejo Street it's chilly with fog oozing up from the Bay.
I turn east, walk down into the canyon of Van Ness, then up again to my own fog-shrouded neighborhood, Russian Hill. Standing at the peak, looking down Hyde Street toward misty Alcatraz Island, I feel a deep twinge of sorrow. After spending hours with Baggy Lord and Agnes Fontaine, I'm starting to see my beautiful city as a place where hypocrisy and duplicity reign.
Safaris! What kind of men are these that they are so ruthless in their pleasures?
It's then that I decide I shall return to the G.G.C., try and penetrate its grounds. I need photographs, evidence, the proof that Maddy wasn't able to obtain. "A suicide mission," Sasha called it when I floated the idea . . . but, as Joel says, those of us who hear the calling must pursue our stories to their ends.
Two twenty A.M.: Joel and I are driving downtown through deserted night streets. At intersections I catch glimpses of Chinese characters on neon signs. As we descend Powell, the fog, thick on the hills, begins to break. At Sutter, we pass a foursome of tourists stumbling into the lobby of the Sir Francis Drake. We turn right on Post, glide by the elegant shops that front Union Square, then turn into the entrance to the Union Square garage. Joel pulls a ticket from the machine, the jackknife opens, we enter and descend into the huge underground space.
Slowly we pass lines of parked cars, methodically cruise each row, winding our way back and forth, searching for a dark gray Mercedes with the vanity plate JADE-5. No sign of life down here, no sound except the hum of our engine. The light is harsh, fluorescent, the shadows deep. The air smells of iron and oil. It's as if we've entered a space devoid of anything except gleaming metal machines arranged on a vast concrete floor broken occasionally by steel columns. Dead space.
There are, Joel tells me, eleven hundred slots in the garage. Unable to find the car, we descend to the second level, then the third, finally the fourth. Here at the bottom more empty spaces, more lifelessness, more dust on the hoods. And the vehicles, it seems to me, are uglier than the ones above—shapes less sleek, alignment less rigorous.
"Stop," I tell Joel.
He brakes the car.
"What's up, kiddo?"
"I've got a feeling, that's all."
We both stare around.
"Over there." I point to a dim corner, which, if I'm not mistaken, lies beneath the southeast intersection of Stockton and Geary.
"Think that's it?"
"I think so."
"You've got a hawk's eyes, kiddo."
"Yeah, at night I do."
Joel applies a little gas, very slowly approaches the corner, brakes again sixty feet away. He must sense the aura too, for there's something issuing from the dark vehicle in that corner—aloneness, morbidity, danger, the car sitting there like a snake poised to strike. We both feel it. And since neither of us is anxious to get out and discover why, we sit silent side by side staring at it, wondering what to do. Impossible to read the license plate, but the make is right, and, Joel assures me, the color.
"Your informant—what was his mood?" I ask.
"He wasn't jovial, if that's what you mean. No mention of me getting a nice treat this time." Joel turns to me. "Why d'you ask?"
"This place. The stillness. Down here you can't even hear the rumble from the street. Also, something in the air."
Joel sniffs, shrugs. "I don't know. Something . . . maybe. You think—?"
I shrug. "Guess we better take a look."
He reaches to the back seat, picks a flashlight off the floor; then we get out of the car, bo
th of us at the same time, and saunter cautiously toward the Mercedes. At thirty feet, Joel stoops, squints, shines his light on the plate.
"JADE-5," he says, smiling grimly. "Don't suppose it's booby-trapped, do you?"
"Do you?"
"Fuck it!"
He starts toward the car. I grab his arm. It doesn't take much strength to hold him back. "Let's circle around first. Maybe we'll see something."
We circle. His flashlight reveals nothing; the glass in the car windows is the kind that darkens under direct light.
"Useless," he hisses, flicking off his flashlight. Just then I catch a glimpse of a form inside.
"Do that again."
"What, kiddo?"
"Turn it on and off. Yes, just like that. Couple more times. Okay, that's enough. There's a guy in there."
"There is!"
"He's real still. He may be dead, Joel."
"Shit!"
I raise my camera. "I'm going to strobe him. Take a look."
Whap!whap!whap! As expected, my strobe defeats the glass, burns straight through to reveal a man on the passenger side slumped over the center console.
"I'll call the cops," Joel says.
He punches in 911 as I continue to shoot, circling the car. For years I've dealt with fear like this, hiding behind my camera, concentrating on photographing a gruesome scene so as not to yield to my terror. I pretend I'm a forensic photographer working every angle on the corpse. This way I don't have to ask who he is or what he did or how he died, just get the pictures, document the event, use my lens to distance myself from the horror. But then, after I've shot out the roll, I feel faint, squat on the cement floor, try to reload, am suddenly overcome by nausea and heat.
Joel kneels beside me. "They'll be here soon. You okay?"
"If I could just have some water or something."
"I've got water in the car."
While he goes to fetch it, I spool in a fresh roll. Then, as he holds the bottle to my mouth, we hear the sirens.
Joel has an oversize white handkerchief in his hand. "When they open those car doors it's going to stink." He sprinkles water on the cloth, shapes it into a triangle, ties it behind my neck, pulls it up over my nose like a surgical mask.
"Okay, kiddo?"
I nod. "Flashlight, water bottle, fresh hankie—you got it all."
"'Be prepared,' my old scoutmaster used to say."
There're ten cops with us now, eight in uniform plus a pair of detectives. The car door's open and an assistant medical examiner is checking out the corpse. A police photographer with a crappy camera has pushed me aside. He wears bedroom slippers, loose khaki pants, and a soiled V-neck T-shirt. Since Joel's known most of these guys for years, they include him in their banter.
"Asian male, mid-thirties, hair disheveled, two bullet holes back of the neck," the AME announces. "Powder burns, like they pressed the barrel against him. One of those little .22 jobbies they like to use. Blood spatter on the dash. Shooter probably in the back seat, grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head back, fired twice, then pushed him forward. I'd say ten, twelve hours since the kill."
They've already run the JADE-5 plate. The car's registered to a Mrs. May Wing Ho on Clay Street.
"Typical Chinatown mob hit," the lead detective tells Joel. His name's Kingston, he wears a flashy striped dress shirt, badge clipped to the breast pocket. "Way they do it they go out together, drink tea, tell jokes, everything ha-ha-ha. Then, soon as they get back into the car, the schnook"—Kingston gestures toward the corpse—"gets it fast. They drive to a garage, an alley, wherever, get out, walk away. Later when we check, we find the car was stolen a few hours before. Or maybe it wasn't stolen. Maybe it was loaned. Doesn't matter. There's never any evidence, just a dead guy with a couple of holes in the back of his head. Sometimes it turns out he ran up heavy debt or tried to move in on an established gang. Half the time we can't even run a proper ID."
"Is that a real Rolex he's wearing?" Joel asks.
Kingston raises the victim's arm, expertly strips the watch off his wrist. "Hmmm. Sure looks like it." He reaches into the man's back trousers pocket, extracts a wallet. "Well, looky here." He shows us a wad of hundred-dollar bills. "So maybe this time it isn't an ordinary Chinatown hit . . ."
I tell Joel I feel like throwing up. He smiles, helps me back to his car. After I'm seated, he leans in through the window.
"I feel trapped down here . . . like we're in a tomb," I whisper.
"We are," he says.
"You got tipped on this. Doesn't that mean anything?"
"Kingston, unfortunately, isn't the brightest cop in town."
"You recognized the dead guy?"
Joel nods. "You're pretty sharp tonight. Yeah, he's a Wo Hop To waterfront big shot name of Kevin Lee. Which, considering what's been going on, makes sense."
"What kind of sense?"
"Human smuggling, animal smuggling, a big boat blown up off China Basin. Seems like someone's trying to bust up the Wo Hop To rackets. Whoever's tipping me is laying down a trail. If he can assassinate Kevin Lee, he's telling me, he can do anything he wants."
Joel tells Kingston what he knows, then drives me home. As we ascend toward the street I start feeling better. Out in open air I breathe deeply, delighted to be free.
"Soon, I think, our informant's gotta tell me what he wants," Joel says. "He's setting me up, wants me to be too scared to refuse."
"What could he possibly want, Joel?"
"I don't know. But next time he calls I'm going to have it out with him. I'm tired of this shit, kiddo." Joel's mouth is twisted, his eyes cold with anger. "I'm going to tell him time's come to cut the crap."
On Russian Hill, when I get out of the car, I'm reeling with paranoia. Joel shakes his head.
"Great evening, huh?"
"Yeah, great evening. Night, Joel."
I wait till he drives off, then enter my building. As I ascend in the elevator, I ask myself: Are we mad or is it just the world?
Tonight I dream of cruising endless lines of cars, passing opaque windows hiding dead people still in their seats, eyes frozen open, staring out, revealed only when I blast their windows with my strobe.
I'm lying on my back in a grove of sequoias in Jackson State Forest, have been hiding here since closing time, half sleeping, half resting on my bedroll a hundred feet off the trail so as not to be discovered by forest rangers on patrol.
My bike is stashed in brush nearby. The moon, just a crescent, casts dimly tonight, barely enough to break through the canopy. My eyes, open for half an hour, are totally adjusted to the darkness. Even with meager moonlight, my night vision is superb. I can make out a squirrel poised on a branch high above, the texture of bark on the tree trunks, an owl standing like a sentinel on a low branch of a baby sequoia sixty feet away.
I can also read. I complete a final review of Chap Fontaine's G.G.C. security map, refamiliarize myself with details I've been studying for a week, then check my watch. Two-thirty A.M. Time to start my trek.
It's a weekday night. G.G.C. security should be lax, with just a skeleton crew of guards. My objective: steal as close as I can to the main lodge, take photographs at first light of the site of the orgies and the duel, then get the hell out. Purpose: to later distribute said photographs to Carson and his group, showing them that their security's been breached and there's someone who knows what happened. This distribution, hopefully, will cause dissension, making some of Carson's friends rethink their loyalty. For, I've come to understand, if anything's to be proven, people who know are going to have to talk.
I roll the map into my sleeping bag, stash it with my bike, then cautiously make my way on foot out of the forest to the barbed-wire G.G.C. fence, the one Sasha and I found when we followed the crude map Hank Evans drew for us at the Paradise Saloon. I'm wearing a black turtleneck, black jeans, black baseball cap, black hiking boots. My expedition camera, one of Maddy's, is a battered old all-black Nikon-F loaded with high-speed film. I carry no ID
, nothing except a compass, my watch and a canteen of water.
The fence is just where it's supposed to be. This time, with Fontaine's detailed G.G.C. security map etched into my memory, I know the precise route to follow. I walk parallel to the fence a hundred paces until I find a segment where someone's cut out a lower strand. I kneel, push my camera through, then lie on my back and slither beneath.
Though just a couple of yards outside of the state forest, I'm in a different world, on G.G.C. property, a trespasser. Club guards have shot people for what I'm doing. G.G.C. security policy is succinctly laid down in one of Chap Fontaine's documents: "Assume all trespassers are poachers and treat them accordingly."
The moon, I think, shines upon me. I'll be protected by the night.
I follow the barbed wire for two hundred yards, until I spot the padlocked gate Sasha and I saw before. Here I crouch, listening for vehicles. I can hear nothing but the squeaking of branches in the forest behind and the sounds of birds and small nocturnal animals in the scrubwood ahead. When I'm certain there's no one around, I set out at a ninety-degree angle to the fence, hiking deep into G.G.C. property. I'm looking for a hunter's path which, according to Fontaine's map, runs parallel to the fire road that starts at the padlocked gate.
When I find it, I halt and listen again, then follow it north. It's a two-mile walk to the main clearing and club lodge. Hiking slowly and very carefully, I expect to cover the distance in an hour, then find a position from which to take photographs. The trail is poorly kept, signifying it's probably not patrolled. Several times I stumble on roots across the path. Once I trip, lose balance, am forced to use my hands to break my fall. Pushing aside branches, I try to avoid them as they snap back. Still I'm lashed twice, once across my left side, the second time across my shoulder, neck and upper arm. The sting is terrific. It takes all my concentration to keep from crying out. I touch my neck, feel a welt. Bringing my fingers to my lips, I taste blood. I stop, open my canteen, sip water, then apply some to the cut.
I'm working my way down a slope toward a draw. As the slope steepens, I step off the trail, make my way through brush toward the bottom of the gully, then work my way along it across a dry riverbed of stones. I've come down here to avoid the first danger point, a secondary fence that's electrified and crosses the trail. In the rainy season, I know, this gully embraces a rushing torrent. Now in summer it's bone-dry.
Trick of Light Page 19