The Magician's Tale

by William Bayer

  Jack learned some Cantonese, then started making friends, up and down Stockton, Grant, Jackson, Washington, the alleys Ross, Pontiac, Stark, Old Chinatown—narrow dead-end streets where when you passed you could hear the slap of mahjong pieces against wood, and where, in cellars and on the upper floors, whorehouses, opium dens and gambling parlors were installed.

  The partners got along well, in time became best friends. So that night, when Jack felt his springs about to bust, it was natural he search Rusty out in half a dozen hangouts he frequented late at night.

  He found him finally at Choi's Triple-X, a nudie-cutie live-action cabaret at the eastern end of Chinatown. Out in front of Choi's a busty sloe-eyed hawker-girl was leashed to a pagoda-shaped stanchion, enabling her to act as a warm-bodied gatepost without fear of being carried off by rowdy passersby.

  There was a stripper worked here, one Becky Yee, who at the time possessed Rusty's heart. Jack found his old partner in her dressing room, holding one of her yellow silk stage garments to his mustache.

  Sensing at once that Jack was in trouble; Rusty guided him to a beer joint around the corner. Immediately Jack began spilling out the evening's events, Rusty nodding, consoling, giving Jack succor to face his demons.

  "A purely innocent occurrence," was how Rusty described Skeleton-man's demise. "No harm intended. Could've happened to anyone, Jack."

  "Yeah, but we all knew Billy was violent," Jack said. "We shouldn't have let him stay."

  "We're all fuckin' violent," Rusty countered. "Anyway it's not killing the guy that'll bring you trouble. No jury'll convict you for that. Vasquez steered you wrong. It's covering up, lying about it. If Hale smells a rat he'll be all over you. He'll follow you all to the ends of the earth . . . and then on to your graves."

  Rusty's advice was terse: Once you take the cover-up route, you can't consider turning back. You brave it out, lie and bluster, and hope your story holds and none of your buddies breaks. The code of silence, he said, should get you through, and if no one ID's the body, or better, doesn't connect it to Sipple, the odds of things working out are probably four to one. What Jack ought to do now, he said, is go home, take a shower, get a good night's sleep. The next couple of days were going to be rough, so the better rested he was, the greater his chances of getting by Hale.

  But there was something else Jack wanted to discuss: who the T killer was. They'd killed a man. It didn't seem decent not to know his name.

  "You got his clothes, check them out."

  Jack explained that Billy took them. "Look, I'm no detective," Jack said. "I don't know where to begin."

  Rusty knew: "Start with the car. Walk the streets up there, chalk the tires, let a couple days pass and see which cars don't move. Then run their plates. I doubt he parked more 'n a block or two away."

  When he finally got home, he found Carlotta asleep, but when he came out of the shower she was sitting up in bed.

  "Nice evening with tootsie-baby?" she inquired. She had a way of hissing the word, which was why, Jack supposed, she used it instead of "girlfriend" or "lover."

  There was no tootsie-baby, of course. They both knew that. It was just a little joke between them whenever he came home late. But tonight he wasn't in a joking mood, was too sloshed, wrapped up in his troubles. So he made a mistake, forgot to humor her, mumbled something about finding the quip stale.

  She settled back under the covers, face creased with hurt. "Sometimes you're a real bastard, Jack."

  "Sure," he acknowledged, "sometimes a damned unhappy one too."

  Silence while he pulled on a fresh pair of boxers. He was going to slip into bed beside her, when she issued her retort:

  "One of these days soon I'll stick my head in the oven. Or jump off the G.G. Bridge. Then maybe you'll look back and regret the hurtful things you said. . . ."

  The mention of the bridge at that particular moment came close to pushing him over the edge. It was one o'clock in the morning, he'd saved one man's life, then been party to the killing of another. He was exhausted, but he didn't care—he wasn't going to lie down beside her now. Instead he went downstairs to the kitchen and set to work making a perfect, honest, truth-telling loaf of bread. He dozed while the dough rose, then fired up the oven and baked it off. When it came out it was beautiful—soft and chewy at its center with a gently shattering crust.

  Though he wasn't due on duty till four p.m. the following day, he planned to go early to the Haight and start marking parked cars like Rusty said. But just as he was preparing to leave the house, he got a call from Wainy. They were wanted down at the Hall of Justice right away.

  When he arrived he ran into the other four, along with Mercurio, the Park Station commander. Sipple had died a couple hours before, of a heart attack the doctors said. Meantime Hale's team had spotted the case, gone over to the crime scene and found a mess. Now they wanted the evidence Wainy had reported on the forms, and when he couldn't produce it, all hell broke loose.

  First they were separated, placed in five small interrogation cubicles, then left alone to stew. During that time Jack thought about Sipple—how exhilarated he'd felt after saving the kid's life and how miserable now that all his efforts had been for naught. Then Mercurio came in and told him how serious the matter was. This was the T case and somebody'd better remember something fast or heavy discipline would be meted out.

  Next a two-man team of detectives, T case investigators, hard jaws and flinty eyes, came in. Jack had to tell them his story three separate times, more time passed, then he and the others were herded into a conference room, seated opposite the entire T case task force. The detectives glared at them. Mercurio, arms folded, stood against the wall. Minutes passed then Hale entered. Jack, who only knew him from appearances on TV, found his eyes frighteningly pale. Hale didn't bother to introduce himself, just started to talk.

  He didn't shout at them or scream, yet every word came dripping with contempt. As the task force glowered, and Mercurio shook his head, the five of them endured the dressing-down. They had royally fucked up, and now because of that more innocent people would likely be killed. They had disgraced their shields, which they no longer deserved to wear, were meager examples of cops, everything an S.F.P.D. cop shouldn't be—stupid, clumsy, weak, inept, unreliable, undependable, totally unfit. If it were up to Hale he'd nail their hides to the front of the Hall, signs saying DICKHEAD hanging around their necks. Fortunately for them, their fates were in other hands. But he'd taken this opportunity to express the task force's scorn, hoping they would do the honorable thing and resign. He held no hatred for them, merely pity. At that he left the room, followed by his detectives. When everyone had gone, Mercurio informed them they were dismissed, then left them without a glance.

  For Jack that half hour was the most humiliating of his life. The others, he guessed, felt the same. Billy sat low in his seat. There were tears in Ricky's eyes. Wainy looked broken—a functioning alcoholic, his whole life revolved around being a cop. Only Vasquez appeared unmoved. He was completing college at night, people said. Glancing at him after the dressing-down, Jack detected a frightening sangfroid.

  They didn't speak as they filed out of the building. Word of what had happened quickly spread. Reporters clustered around peppering them with questions, peering at them in that curious way one stares at people in disgrace. They ran a gauntlet of cops, attorneys, handcuffed criminals, all stripping them with mocking eyes. Jack was trembling when he reached his car. Safe inside, he leaned over his steering wheel and wept.

  Back at Park Station he was informed by his sergeant he'd been reassigned to desk duty pending a hearing. No way now could he risk going up to Frederick Street and placing chalk marks on the tires of parked cars. Too many task force people milling around, too much visibility, too many questions he wouldn't be able to answer if he was seen. The only thing to do was sit at the bare desk, stare at the wall, put in the hours, then go home to his wounded, troubled wife.

  She was on psychiatric leave from her jo
b as school music teacher; she'd broken down too many times in class. When he came home he'd usually find her at her piano, either sitting morose and still or else struggling with the Schubert B-flat sonata, a piece that wandered and ruminated in ways she could never resolve, so that she constantly became lost within it, repeating sections over and over for hours at a time. It was, Jack felt, the saddest piece of music he ever heard, and, in her hands, so tearful it filled the house with gloom.

  He tried to counter this darkness with the aroma of baking bread. He baked some magnificent loaves over those weeks, bread-making his only respite from Carlotta's melancholy and all the forces crushing him down.

  Every day he waited for Skeleton-man to show up, searching the papers for one of those one-paragraph items about an unidentified jumper washed to shore. Nothing.

  At work he daily checked the missing persons lists, looking closely at reports that mentioned tattoos. There were no such reports.

  What had happened? Had Skeleton-man drifted out to sea, been devoured by ocean beasts, torn to pieces against the rocks? Had he no lover, parents, siblings, friends, no one who missed him and declared him missing? Had he existed at all? That his body never turned up gave the whole experience the hallucinatory quality of dream.

  The summer passed. He, Wainy and the others avoided one another. When they met by accident, they'd nod grimly and move on. All appeared broken except for Vasquez, who, strangely, seemed to gain strength from the debacle.

  The next few months Jack and Carlotta rarely spoke, he lost in wonderment at the sour way his life had turned, she mired ever deeper in depression. Their friends avoided them. It wasn't his disgrace, Jack understood, but the aura he and Carlotta cast. Carrying themselves like broken souls, they had become exemplars of despair.

  When the I.A. report was leaked, Jack didn't waste time. He didn't like leaving in disgrace, but was determined to get out fast. He borrowed some money from his brother-in-law, arranged a bank loan for the rest, and that October opened the City Stone Ground Bakery on upper Clement Street.

  After the first day of business, exhilarated at last to be doing what he loved, he came home to find Carlotta slumped limply over the foot end of their bed. She had lain down, thrust her head back till it was upside down, stuck his spare revolver in her mouth and fired. Death for her had been instantaneous. But, perhaps the opposite of her intention, guilt over what she'd done would haunt him the rest of his life.

  Years passed. The memory of that night of rescue and murder would fade, though the recollection of certain sensory impressions—the licorice smell of the soap, the thickness of the fog, the oiliness of the water—remained intense. And what could never fade was the image of Carlotta that faced him when he returned that first night from the bakery—the bizarre position of her head, the glassy stare in her eyes, the garbled agony of her mouth. Sometimes, early in the morning, when he worked dough in his hands, Jack would take a few moments to sculpt human features. Then as he mashed the dough back into a loaf shape, he would re-create the distortion of her face.

  It was seven years before Hale approached him for the first time, late one afternoon walking nonchalantly into the bakery, purchasing a baguette, smiling slightly when Jack, handing him his change, recognized his face. This was a different Hale than the man who'd berated them down at the Hall that awful afternoon. He was a thin man now, his mustache was gray, his eyes and hair had lost their luster.

  "How you doin', Jack?"

  At first he was anxious; Rusty, after all, had warned him Hale would pursue them to their graves. And then, with Hale so amiable, he wondered if he'd stopped by to make amends. When he discovered what Hale wanted, he was shocked and horrified: the man was still working the T case on his own and had come to ask for help.

  Thus began the series of annual visits that always set Jack on edge—Hale in his you-and-I-are-now-equals mode, stopping in to discuss the details of the hood. One year he asked Jack to make a drawing of it from memory, another year had him accompany him on a tour of custom leather shops. Word got back that Hale was also making unannounced visits to the others. Wainy said he enjoyed these encounters for the opportunity to play Hale for a fool. Ricky Puccio laughed them off. Billy Hayes found himself rattled. As for Vasquez, he was still in the Department, climbing steadily up the ladder. None of them knew whether Hale had taken to dropping in on him, but Jack doubted it. There was something about Vasquez that caused people to want to stay clear.

  There was a cat-and-mouse aspect to Hale's visits, a message in his congeniality. His thin smile announced: I know about the conspiracy, I know more than you think

  Because the meetings were so widely spaced, they appeared to be made without pressure. But Hale's apparent lack of urgency became a form of pressure in itself. It was as if he was saying: "I have all the time in the world to get to the bottom of what you did. Sooner or later one of you'll break. Till then I'll be coming around."

  One autumn day, ten years after Sipple, Billy Hayes wandered in. Jack's greeting was guarded, but Billy pretended he didn't notice. He asked Jack if he had time to talk. They strolled up Clement, past the little Asian groceries and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, then over to quieter California Street where there was a neighborhood bar Billy knew.

  Here they talked about this and that, what each had been doing, Jack's success with the bakery, Billy's troubles as boxing trainer and promoter. Then Billy steered the conversation around to the event that had changed their lives—the accidental death of Skeleton-man and the puzzle of who he was.

  Billy mentioned Hale's visits, how unnerving he found them, as if Hale already knew everything that had happened and was just waiting for one of them to spill. He said he'd been tempted several times to dig up the garbage bag containing Skeleton-man's clothing and the other evidence he'd hurriedly buried behind his garage, then throw the stuff into the ocean to be rid of it once and for all. He'd even, he admitted, prepared to excavate by the rear foundation wall several times, but each time lost his nerve before his shovel hit the dirt. It was as if, Billy said, so long as that sack remained in the ground, the whole haunting nightmare would stay on hold. But if he should ever bring it up, no matter his purpose, the consequences could not be foreseen.

  Three weeks later, Billy shot himself. It was Hale's visits, Jack was certain, that drove him to it. That, Jack believed, was what Hale wanted from them all: Either give up the evidence, tell the story straight, or eat your guns—your choice.

  A month later, Jack drove out to where Billy had lived on Railroad Avenue in South San Francisco. He told himself he wanted to see how Debbie Hayes, Billy's widow, was doing. But when he arrived he didn't get out of his car. Instead he paused in front of the house, then circled the block to locate the rear of the garage, set on a weed-choked strip that lined a dusty stretch of track. He stared for a while at the garage, a flat-roofed structure built of cinder blocks, then drove back home.

  It bothered him that he knew where the stuff was hidden. He hadn't wanted that information, but back at the bar Billy had casually let it slip. Or perhaps not so casually, Jack thought—perhaps Billy had come by with the sole purpose of telling because he already had his suicide planned and wanted to pass on the burden first.

  Whatever Billy's intent, Jack realized, he was now back in the nightmare. He not only knew what had happened, but now also knew where the evidence could be found. Evidence that not only would resolve the T case, lead to the identification of the T killer and satisfy Hale, but also would ruin people's lives, not least of all his own.

  Or was he wrong?

  That's what he wondered now that Kay had pried the story out of him. If she'd been right when she speculated that Carlotta had shot herself to lift from him the burden of his guilt, then perhaps Billy had killed himself for a similar reason—to take on responsibility for the awful act in which they'd all played a part.

  But if that was true, then why hadn't Billy left a note addressed to Hale, confessing everything, telling where
the stuff was stashed?

  Carlotta hadn't left a note either.

  So the truth was that in both cases Jack didn't know, and further, there was no way he could ever find out.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The shadows of the pines are long now, striping the close-cut grass. There's a chill in the air, a breeze from off the Bay that makes me cross my arms and huddle in my sweater.

  Dad gazes past me . . . at a pair of golfers. I look at them too. One stands, hands on hips, while his companion prepares to swing. With the stroke the iron blade of the club catches the sun, transmitting a flash. Instinctively I blink . . . too late to save my rods from saturation. Several seconds later, when my vision clears, I find Dad searching my eyes.

  "It rips my heart when the light hurts you," he says.

  A great love for him wells up. I need to hold him close. I step behind him, wrap his massive torso, press my chest against his vast broad back.

  I can feel him shudder. Through his cotton shirt the tips of my fingers detect the beating of his heart. He was always my supporter, builder of my confidence, telling me I could do anything I set my mind to. Yes, he taught me, I had a handicap, but not one that need hold me back. If I loved the night, that's when he'd take me out for walks, tell me stories, teach me to ride a bicycle. If the midday sun blinded me, he would play catch with me at twilight, take me to the beach at dusk, teach me to swim against the sunset.

  "She must have been so wounded." He's speaking now of Mom. "She wouldn't have done it otherwise."

  "And angry," I say. "Most likely at herself."

  He shakes his head. "At me."

  I don't understand it and never expect to. Who can comprehend her parents' marriage? All I know is that to kill oneself one must be possessed by an enormous rage. My heart goes out to both of them—to her for her ferocious anger, to him for all the ravages wrought by guilt.